


Try, Try Again

by petreparkour



Series: dawn of a doom of a dream [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A retelling of the MCU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, DONT WORRY GUYS IM HERE!!, EXTREME Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Hydra (Marvel), Iron Man 3, M/M, Never Abandoned, Not Canon Compliant, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PLEASE read previous work, Project Insight (Marvel), Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, SHIELD, Steve Rogers Feels, Stony - Freeform, THE RUSSOS ARE CLOWNS, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Time Travel Repercussions, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, no spoilers for most mcu movies as they will happen very differently, so please don't expect super fast updates, sooo many things to tag, this rewrite requires SO MUCH BRAINPOWER, will become more ensemble-based as time passes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2020-08-18 22:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20199316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petreparkour/pseuds/petreparkour
Summary: After his and Steve's future selves came, went, and issued warnings about both the Hydra infestation in SHIELD and a maniacal space warlord named Thanos bent on collecting the Infinity Stones, Tony had really thought that everything would work out fine.Then, Steve goes to Washington, DC and watches on the news as Tony's Malibu house collapses into the Pacific.That's just perfect.(Alternatively: Steve and Tony were stolen from their time mid-battle with Thanos and dropped into the middle of the Battle of New York. This changes things).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> im baaaaaack!!!!
> 
> This story is going to be a retelling of the ENTIRE MCU, which, as you guys could probably guess, is an absolute pain in the ASS to figure out. My beta and I spent _hours_ parsing this out, which is why it took so long to come out. But it's finally here!!!
> 
> **IT IS HIGHLY SUGGESTED THAT YOU READ THE FIRST WORK IN THIS SERIES, THE GOOD OR BAD THING. IF YOU DO NOT, YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY CONFUSED**. Just click 'Previous Work'!
> 
> If you're that vehement about not reading it, just understand that this new timeline has been changed by future versions of Steve and Tony when they were pulled to New York during the battle with Loki in 2012.
> 
> Enjoy!!!!!

_ “We’re live on CNN with breaking news. Several worrying developments from across the world have turned into events with the potential to become major catastrophes. Threats and bombings from the terrorist organization have culminated in the bombing of Tony Stark’s home in Malibu, California, after he threatened its leader, the Mandarin, to a group of reporters earlier today. Stark, better known as Iron Man and as one of the Avengers, is missing and presumed dead. _

_ “In Washington DC, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton, better known respectively as Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, also members of the Avengers, were seen at SHIELD headquarters in the Triskelion with a few other unidentified individuals. Shots are being fired, and neither the Secret Service nor the National Guard have commented on the President’s fate. President Ellis is believed to be on Air Force One at this time and accompanied by Colonel James Rhodes, better known as the rebranded Iron Patriot. _

_ “Across the ocean in Europe, an unidentified ship has crashed in Greenwich. Civilian casualties are unclear at this time. Thor, the Asgardian who joined the Avengers in defeating Loki last year, has been sighted at the scene. So far, all of these individual battles would have the potential to be catastrophic. With them all happening at the same time, there’s no telling how damaging these battles could be. More on these stories as they develop.” _

* * *

“Steve,” Tony called cheerily, pressing the trigger to inject another one of his nanites into his forearm. “_Ow! _Um, be a dear and please take that smoothie from DUM-E before he creams me with it.”

“Maybe you’d absorb it and finally get some healthy food into you,” Steve countered even as he went to relinquish the suspicious mix from DUM-E’s clutches. 

Tony let out a faux-offended gasp, setting the injector aside and flicking up a schematic for the not-yet-built Mark 43. “_Captain America! _ Are you insulting my self-care habits—whoa, how did I manage to plan out how to fit an entire ice-cream maker into the suit? This doesn’t even make sense, this is like something Clint would demand that I build into his quiver and then decide that it was too bulky and then I’d have to give him back his old one and he wouldn’t notice, JARVIS, who approved this?”

“That would be you, sir,” JARVIS responded dryly. 

Tony snapped his fingers. “The sass. I didn’t—did I program that? I feel like I would have remembered doing that.”

“The notion escapes me, sir.”

Tony spun around his chair and noticed that Steve was sitting down now, bowed over on the table, smoothie in one hand, his head in the other. “Hey, did I already break you? Or did you drink out of that smoothie, because I’m ninety percent sure that DUM-E put more motor oil in that than actual smoothie ingredients—”

“Coolant, sir.”

“—Coolant, even better. Steve?”

“Fine,” Steve said, his voice a little strained. “I’m fine.”

“Oookay,” Tony said, snatching the injector back up. “J, where was I?”

“Forty-five. Three inches below your elbow joint—”

“Yeah, whatever.” Tony lined up the injector as best he could with the patience he had, which was an impressive second and a half. He pressed down and bit back a yelp, shaking his hand out in a futile attempt to get rid of the pain. 

“Forty-six. Sir, please may I request just a few hours to calibrate—”

“No,” Tony interjected briefly, and pressed down again. 

“Forty-seven.”

“Tony,” Steve chided, looking far more composed than he had a minute earlier. 

“Steve.” Tony looked him straight in the eye as he pressed down the injector one more time. He hissed and picked up a tissue to dab away the blood on his arms. “Micro-repeater implanting sequence complete.”

“As you wish, sir. I’ve also prepared a safety briefing for you to entirely ignore.”

“Which I will,” Tony responded easily. 

“You’re incorrigible,” Steve told him, but his lips were twitching. 

“And you love me for it,” Tony said without thinking, then froze. He felt his cheeks heat up, but Steve didn’t seem to notice. He just said, “Yeah, yeah,” and went back to playing keep-away with DUM-E. 

“Okay, let’s do this,” Tony squeaked out, and even though his voice was _ not _ strangled, thank you very much, U and Butterfingers still swiveled to stare at him for a moment. “DUM-E. Hi, DUM-E.” The bot half-swiveled to face Tony, momentarily forgetting his game. The dunce cap had become lopsided sometime during the past few hours. “How did you get that cap on your head? You earned it.”

“That’s mean,” Steve chided, but Tony waved it away, focusing on U instead. 

“Sir, might I remind you that you’ve been awake for nearly seventy-two hours?” JARVIS’s voice rang through the room.

Steve made a choked sputtering sound, but Tony entirely ignored both of them, instead focusing on the camera that U was holding. “Start tight and then go wide. Stamp date and time. Oh, Butterfingers, do we have, um, get Steve a helmet, do we have helmets down here?”

“Due to your apparent hatred of proper safety procedures, we do not have proper protective equipment down in the lab. However, your welding mask is on the table behind you, sir.”

“Tony,” Steve chastised halfheartedly. Tony ignored him, and Butterfingers handed Steve the makeshift helmet. “Thank you, Butterfingers.”

“Steve, stand back, yeah?” Steve didn’t look convinced, but he obligingly moved away. “Mark 42. Autonomous prehensile propulsion suit test.”

Tony flicked his fingers in the pattern that he’d designed to turn on the pieces of the suit, and sure enough, the jets on the various fragments powered up. “Initialize sequence.”

He stuck his arm out in the movement that he’d programmed to summon the Iron Man suit. 

Nothing happened. 

Exasperated, Tony dropped his arms, then jerked them forwards again. Nothing. 

“Crap,” he muttered, smacking at where the implants were, and Steve flipped his visor up, smirking. Tony jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you say it—”

His gauntlet activated and wrapped itself around Tony’s arm, and Tony whooped. Steve started for a moment, wide-eyed, before the shoulder plate nearly took his head off and he ducked away, the visor flipping back down. 

Tony stuck his other arm out and the other gauntlet shot out to close over Tony’s wrist. He felt a swell of victory and a slight urge to say _ I told you so _ to Steve, and he laughed. “All right, I think we got this. Send them all.”

“Uh, Tony,” Steve began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish. One leg wrapped around him no problem, but the next part shot past their heads too fast and Tony just barely dodged it. It crashed through the display case of the Mark 27 and Tony sighed, but then barely deflected another poorly-aimed piece that flung itself into a light fixture, sending sparks flying everywhere.

“Probably a little fast. Slow it down. Slow it down just a…” he made a _ time-out _ gesture and narrowly deflected another flying piece. “little bit.”

Another went flying past his head and broke off some of the piping running up the wall. Steve yelped and ducked another, half-hiding behind the table. Tony retrieved another leg before the back piece sent him stumbling off of the raised platform he was standing on. He narrowly activated his repulsors, snapping out, “Cool it, will you JARVIS?” before the rest of the pieces assembled together.

The faceplate knocked into the back of Steve’s head, sending him stumbling to the floor, before it slammed into Tony’s face. 

“I’m the best,” Tony announced as the HUD lit up. He licked away the blood on his lip and decided that he wouldn’t gloat too badly. 

“I have to go to DC,” Steve said, and in Tony’s distraction, the stray piece of armor embedded in the Mark 27 shot out and knocked Tony over. He felt the armor’s integrity collapse and the pieces scatter everywhere, and he groaned. 

“As always, a pleasure watching you work, sir.” JARVIS told him dryly, and Tony resisted the urge to flip the camera off. 

“Tony!” Steve exclaimed, as though he hadn’t been the one to distract Tony. 

“I hate you,” Tony said dully. “What was that about DC?”

Steve pulled the helmet off and studied his face for a moment. He wiped the trail of blood off Tony’s mouth with a thumb, and Tony’s heart rate stuttered for a moment. 

“I have to go help Natasha with Hydra,” Steve said softly, and Tony blinked. 

“The tone that you said that in did _ not _ match what you just said,” Tony informed him. 

Steve rolled to his feet. “She, Fury, and Hill have had a hell of a time exposing and uprooting a lot of the agents, especially in STRIKE, but Natasha worded it as… she needs someone who radiates patriotism and America to root out the evil fuckers.”

“And that,” Tony said, flopping onto his back. “is why I give her the fun toys. Also, language, seriously, you’re supposed to be the embodiment of patriotism and chastity. What’s the other reason?”

Steve sighed and sat down next to him. “You’ve had facial recognition running for Bucky for nearly a year now. Still no results. If I’m dealing with Hydra in DC…”

“You might find him,” Tony concluded. “I mean, I’m not going to stop you. I’m moving out of here soon anyway. This area of the house is the only one not full of boxes. You can come back to the Tower once we’re all over and done, no hard feelings.”

“I don’t…” Steve trailed off, shifting around in his seat. 

“Don’t what?”

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m ditching you—um, and the Avengers—for Bucky,” Steve got out in a rush. “It’s just…”

“Steve,” Tony said, sitting up. “I swear to God, don’t worry about it. You’re not ditching anyone. You’re helping Natasha, and trust me, I would _ not _ disobey her. She jabbed me in the neck with a needle while I was near-death, who does that?”

Steve smiled, although he looked vaguely alarmed by the _ near-death _aspect of that sentence. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Tony’s body betrayed him. He yawned hugely. 

Steve smiled at him, and it was warm, huge, and happy. Tony basked in that warmth for a moment before Steve said, “You’re going to bed.”

“No, I’m not.”

* * *

_ There was stardust in Tony’s lungs, even though he wasn’t breathing. _

_ Space opened vast above him, an empty cavern with no beginning, no end, just the empty stars and the empty space in-between and the empty air with no real molecules and the spaceship far above him. _

_ there was nothing _

_ Terrible, horrible light, a mushroom cloud that Tony had known how to build since he was thirteen, but he had never appreciated nor hated the breadth of its destruction to the extent that Tony did now. He hated it so much he couldn’t breathe, which was odd, because he wasn’t breathing anyway. _

_ Nebulae winked in the distance, and there was a voice insisting that he wake up, which didn’t make sense because Pepper hadn’t picked up her phone and JARVIS had lost signal and the portal was far far far below him and he was going to die out here and he realized that maybe he wanted to live— _

“Tony!” A voice insisted, and Tony shot awake just in time to see the Mark 42 come silently behind Steve, who was crouched in front of Tony, shaking his shoulder, and reach for him. 

“_Power down!”_ Tony yelled out, breath too fast too fast too fast. His sheets were damp. Tony wasn’t sure why it was bothering him so much, but he felt the moisture stick to his skin and felt like he might vomit. 

“I must have called it in my sleep,” Tony said, pulling excuses out of thin air. Steve smiled at him, and he kept _ doing that _ and Tony wasn’t sure _ why. _

“No worries,” Steve said easily, rising to his feet. “Nightmares?”

_ None of your business _ was on the tip of Tony’s tongue, but for some reason, what came out was a small, “Yeah.”

“Me too,” Steve admitted. “Do you want to talk about it—?”

“No,” Tony interrupted quickly, then amended himself. “Sorry, Steve, just… maybe another time.”

Steve looked like he wanted to argue, but instead, he smiled _ again. _“Don’t worry about it, Tony. I’m leaving in about an hour. I heard Miss Potts come in, but I can hold off on telling her that you’re awake if…”

“Fine, it’s fine,” Tony breathed, running a hand through his sweaty hair. “I’m just going to shower.”

Steve made an abortive move to step forward, but seemed to decide against it halfway through. “I’ll see you when I get back, Tony,” he said softly, and it sounded like it wasn’t what he had wanted to say. 

The door closed with a soft _ click, _ and while the Mark 42 lorded dispassionately over him, Tony buried his face in his hands and tried desperately not to cry. 

* * *

The conversation with Pepper wasn’t particularly enlightening. She could obviously tell that Tony hadn’t slept much, demonstrated by her lack of paperwork presented for him to sign despite the stuffed briefcase she was carrying. She just asked him if he was still up for dinner—strictly as friends, dating never would’ve worked for them anyway—and he said yes. 

Pepper was one of his best friends. He loved her, and Rhodey, and—

Bad brain. Stop thinking about Steve. 

He knew, obviously, that it was possible that he and Steve could be an item. Their future selves had dated each other, broken up, and then gotten back together. It was obviously feasible, but future Thor had warned that their timeline had already branched off into an alternate universe. While it was good that the space-time continuum hadn’t been destroyed, it also meant that there was no guarantee that they would get together at all. 

Whatever. Tony didn’t need Steve. He didn’t need anyone. 

Then there was that horrible broadcast; the Mandarin hijacked the signal of broadcast TV and took responsibility for bombings that Tony hadn’t even heard about. Rhodey told him about the nine attacks over lunch: no remains of any bomb casings, no witnesses, a heat signature of 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The crayon snapped in half, he broke the crayon_ he broke everything, _ and Tony was stumbling, running to the door, to his suit. The palladium poisoning that had been running through his blood not so long ago forced itself to the forefront of his brain, and he stammered out something about poison and to check his brain before JARVIS’s filtered voice told him that he’d had a major anxiety attack. 

“_Me?" _Tony asked, his voice small. But he felt the terror, the panic, rising in his throat and his stomach, and he knew it was true. 

Rhodey knocked on the faceplate of the suit, looking worried (terrified), and Tony wasn’t even sure what he said to his best friend before the suit shot away. Shit. He’d apologize later. 

He hid himself away in the workshop, in his suits, until Happy called him with some vague concern about a meeting that Pepper was having with someone named Aldrich Killian. Tony wasn’t sure why he was supposed to be worried about someone with the name _ Aldrich, _ but he was quite insistent that Tony be worried that Killian was showing her _ his big brain. _

Happy couldn’t figure out how to flip the screen despite being the former chauffeur and bodyguard of one of the foremost tech designers in the world, and Tony left his phone in the wine cooler. 

Then there was another Mandarin bombing, and goddamn, terrorists knew how to make it _ personal, _ Happy was in the hospital, in a coma, Downton Abbey playing on the screen for _ no goddamn reason, _ Happy was in a coma and Tony was just sitting there watching the faux-elegant, melodramatic episode play out. He was avoiding the flashing lights and the news trucks of the paparazzi. He’d been shoving cameras out of his face since he was two, smiling for the vultures since he was five, but it was so much more personal now, his soul was raw and bleeding and white-hot, burning with anger.

He grabbed some poor reporter’s phone and told the Mandarin exactly what he was feeling, and listed his address and that he’d leave the door open. He smashed the phone and drove away, cold. 

He was shattered glass and jagged metal, and he was a broken suit falling through empty space, watching the sky explode above him and trying to breathe through empty lungs.

* * *

_ what if a much of a which of a wind _

_ gives the truth to summer's lie; _

* * *

Two hours after Steve landed in Washington DC, Steve was in a combat suit, his shield painted black, on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. 

He still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on: something about a man named Batroc, data files implicating more Hydra agents still hiding inside of SHIELD, and Agent Sitwell. Natasha had caught him jogging around the reflecting pool, teasing a pararescue vet named Sam Wilson, and dragged him along with her. 

“So, you and Stark still orbiting each other, or are you finally going to make a move?” she asked, buckling her parachute into place. “When we were living in the Tower, you blushed every time Stark came within a five-foot radius.” Clint snorted a laugh behind her, his quiver already slotted in place below the chute. 

“In your dreams, Nat.”

“You are going to owe me _ so much _ money, Clint. Don’t kid yourself.”

“Oh, yeah, probably,” the archer agreed amicably. “But Steve loses either way.”

“Why would I be losing?” Steve asked wryly, slinging his shield over his back. 

Clint opened his mouth to reply, thought for a moment, and then closed it. 

“In position, Cap,” Maria Hill called from the cockpit. Steve pulled a face at Clint from over his shoulder before he stepped off of the plane’s ramp into the open air.

“You forgot your goddamn parachute, moron!” Clint yelled after him in revenge. Steve heard Hill start to berate Clint about _ professionalism, Barton, Jesus Christ _ as the junior agents began to freak out on board. Natasha called for silence, and Steve tucked his body into a diving position as he plummeted towards the water. 

He took one guard down with a stranglehold, two more with his shield, threw another over the side, and lost track. Natasha was supposed to get to the engine room, and Clint would stick to the high ground, working with the other SHIELD agents to take out the guards around the prisoners: most importantly Sitwell, who was almost certainly Hydra. Steve was aiming for Batroc. 

“Relax, Steve,” Natasha chided, as though sensing his train of thought through the comms. “Fury hired these pirates. They’re on strictly no-kill orders.”

“I’m not really getting that impression.” Steve grunted as he ducked another bullet and knocked another goon out with his shield. He hurled the shield at one more pirate and then paused for a moment as another came up behind him with a machine gun pointed at his torso. An arrow came out of nowhere and caught the man right through the throat.

“Hawkeye,” Steve chided halfheartedly, but he scooped up the shield and kept moving.

“Seriously, Steve,” Natasha said, pacing beside him as she unbuckled her parachute. “If you asked him, he’d probably say yes. He let you in his workshop, and trust me, _ no one _gets in that workshop.”

“Secure the engine room, _ then _ get me a date,” Steve told her, and was rewarded with an “ _ I’m multitasking!” _ as she hopped over the rail and out of sight. 

“Two on your six, Cap,” Clint told him. Steve knocked one out with the shield, and an arrow punctured the other before Steve could blink. 

“Clint, I distinctly recall Fury saying _ no killing,” _ Steve said.

Simultaneously, Natasha and Clint recited, “Teammate in danger of lethal and possible fatal injury.”

“What?”

“That’s the rule that overrides a no-kill order,” Clint informed him gleefully.

“Great, assassins who are also lawyers,” Steve said dryly. 

“Are you close, Widow?” Hill chimed in, not commenting on the assassin duo’s banter.

Steve lost himself in the rhythm of punch, dodge, throw, and did his best to not think too much. Natasha recited an affirmative, and then comms went silent. 

Steve reached the command room, nodding briefly at Clint, who was perched on top. The bug that Hawkeye had secured to the window alerted him to the attempt to start the engines, but then violence over Natasha’s comms quickly dispelled that worry. 

“Snipers in position,” Clint said. “I’ve got eyes.”

“Natasha, what’s your status?” Steve hissed, lowering himself to have a clear view of Batroc. When he didn’t receive a response, he repeated, “Status, Natasha.”

“Hang on!” she barked, then, a minute later, “Engine room secure.”

“Get to the file room,” he said briefly. “Hawkeye, on my mark.”

He heard the rapid _ bangs _ of the snipers working their ways through the guards, and then he hurled his shield through the window of the control tower. He ducked through the gap a moment later, and Batroc kicked him square in the chest and bolted. 

Steve chased after, of course. The pirate (_maximum casualties, _Maria Hill’s voice whispered, and Steve felt a tingle of disgust) spat hatred at him in French and indulged in a series of flips before Steve knocked them both straight through the door of the file room. He raised his fist and left Batroc’s body where it lay. 

“Well, this is awkward,” Natasha said wryly, glancing up from the computers. 

“How close are you?” Steve asked. “Extraction is T-minus two minutes. Clint already has Sitwell in custody.”

“Thirty seconds, tops—” Natasha began, then froze. Steve spun just in time to see Batroc hurl a grenade and bolt out the door. 

He and Natasha moved in sync: she shot the glass of the adjacent room and he grabbed her and hurled them both through it just as the bomb detonated. 

Natasha huffed. “I’ll make do.”

* * *

When Steve arrived back at SHIELD headquarters, there were junior agents all over the ground floor, staring at Natasha, Clint, and especially Steve and whispering. Natasha pretended not to notice, and Clint glared at them, but Steve was just wondering _ why. _

When they got up to Fury’s office, it became extremely clear why. 

The TV in Fury’s office was on to the BBC. There was a reporter with a picture of Tony up on the screen, as well as a caption screaming TONY STARK THREATENS TERRORIST, GIVES HOME ADDRESS. 

“You,” Steve said, radiating absolute calm, “have got to be shitting me.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not,” Fury said, muting it. “How long have you been away from Stark, again?”

“Less than twelve hours,” Steve muttered. 

“Right,” Fury said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 

“I’m calling him,” declared Steve, pulling out his phone from a side pocket. “If he’s still in his house, I’m going to—”

“_Steve!” _ Tony’s voice said brightly over the speakerphone. “_What can I do for you, my good Captain?” _

“Get out of the country, for starters,” Steve snapped. Natasha and Clint were both smirking, and Steve jerked his hand over his throat in the universal _ shut up _ gesture. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“_I was _ thinking,” Tony declared imperiously, “_that I’m not letting anyone else get hurt. The Mandarin can attack me, or come for Chinese, I don’t really care. You hear that, Pepper?” _Tony had obviously moved the phone away from his face, yelling at Pepper, who had to be some distance away. Steve faintly heard a reply, most likely something snappy, and Tony sighed. 

“_Look, Steve, I’m sorry,” _he began, but Clint suddenly stiffened beside him. 

“Stark,” he snapped. “Grab Pepper and get out now.”

“_What?” _

“Now!”

Steve turned to look at the TV. There was live footage projected up on the screen from a news helicopter. The cameraman was good: he had a perfect angle of the series of missiles shooting straight for Tony’s home. 

“Oh, my God,” Natasha said. Fury was watching the screen, lips parted, and Clint started pacing the length of the room like a caged animal. 

“Tony—!” Steve started, but there was an enormous explosion on the other line just as the house was struck by the round of missiles on the television. 

“Tony?” Steve asked desperately. The phone groaned as he clutched it so hard he feared it would snap. “Tony, answer me.”

A beat of silence. Two. Then—

“_We’re good,” _ Tony said on the other end of the line, his voice a bit strangled. “_Um, relatively speaking. Pepper, you’ve got to get her out of here. I’ll be fine.” _

“No, you will_ not _ be fine,” Steve said fiercely into the phone. Three military-grade helicopters were entering the frame, in perfect formation, approaching the house. “There are more coming, you have to—”

There was a horrific screeching, then the line clicked and disconnected. 

Steve stared at the phone for one long moment, CALL FAILED blinking on the screen, then he numbly returned his attention to the TV. 

There was a blur from outside of the building, and Steve recognized the jets of the fragments of the Mark 42. He breathed a sigh of relief as one helicopter tipped on its side and careened downwards toward the ocean after a piano came hurtling out from the wreckage. Another helicopter was blown from the sky, and for a moment, Steve felt hope—Tony could manage these helicopters no problem. 

The helicopter plowed straight into the western edge of the building, and the house crumbled and collapsed into the Pacific. 

The noise that Steve’s phone made when it crumpled in his fist made him think of how the Iron Man suit must have crumpled under all of that wreckage. 

Clint snarled a curse, and Natasha was already on the phone, speaking a language that Steve didn’t even recognize. Fury was watching Steve, his lone eye glinting. 

Steve had been gone for less than twelve hours. He hadn’t even said a proper goodbye. And Tony was—

(Their future selves had made it past 2013 intact. Why was this timeline so different?)

When Steve had been small and scrappy and stupid, he’d stuffed pilfered oranges into his pockets and picked fights he could never win, just to feel some semblance of control. He had been grasping at straws, snarling at Bucky through bloody teeth and defending some broken sense of honor that was more of an excuse than a moral code. He volunteered for an experiment in a Brooklyn basement and crashed a plane into the Arctic chasing that control, but whether he was slipping oranges into his pockets or upsetting plans to tear down democracy, Steve never felt like he was making his own choices. 

He had never felt as helpless as he did now.

Later, he would hear of the broken plating and the bruises of an iron cable around the neck, the fear of being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, crushed by concrete, trapped in a metal coffin. Later, he would listen to a desperate voicemail, a stolen poncho and a malfunctioning suit, but now, he stared at the smoldering wreckage and the watery grave of Tony Stark, and his hands shook. 

“Who did this?” he said softly, his voice shaking as much as his hands.

“The Mandarin,” Natasha put in, putting a hand over her phone. “No other parties involved, as far as I’ve heard."

“While this is all well and good,” Fury interrupted, rising to his feet. “I believe we had an infestation to clear out.”

  
  
“I think this takes precedence, sir,” Clint said hotly, but Fury held up a hand.

“Agent Barton, do you think SHIELD has even a _ chance _ of safely interfering in Malibu with Hydra still within our ranks? We need to move on the data files that Agent Romanoff collected.”

  
  
Pilfered oranges and back-alley fights rang in Steve’s head. His throat was numb with the screams that he was swallowing. His eyes stayed dry.

He turned sharply from the TV screen and said, “Natasha, where do those files take us?”

* * *

Tony woke to a blaring alarm, a malfunctioning HUD, and a suit steadily approaching a snowy road. He felt a headache pounding at his skull and the swelling at his neck from the iron cable that had dragged him to the bottom of the Pacific, his suit filling with water, gasping for air—

When Tony crash-landed in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, he left two voicemails. The first was to Pepper, confirming that he was alive and apologizing for putting her in harm’s way. 

As for the second.... well, Tony was a little disappointed that Steve didn’t pick up his phone, but there was at least a 50% chance that he’d shattered it after the call had disconnected.

“Steve, I gotta say it up front… I dunno what I’m doing here. Oh, um, yeah, I’m alive. Sorry about the whole… phone call thing, I wasn’t really expecting it to go down like that. But really. I don’t—um. This is a mess.

“I’m in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, my suit’s broken, JARVIS is broken, I just had to take a poncho off of a wooden Indian, and I’ve been doing nothing but freaking out this whole trip. I’m in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, I mean, really.” 

Tony slid to his knees in a phone booth in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, and his lungs felt so tight he worried the arc reactor would combust. 

“But, I, um,” Tony continued, his voice impossibly strangled. “Those weeks with you, out in Malibu, they were… great. They were really great. And I know that you want me to come back, I want to come back to you, and I know you’re looking for Bucky and I really, really want you to find him. So… don’t come looking for me. I mean, you won’t be able to find me, because I’m in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, but, well. Don’t try.”

The Iron Man armor scraped along the pavement, and Tony tried his best to keep it safe in the snow. It felt like saying goodbye to an old friend, an aching old wound and an old shoebox full of photographs. The line beeped when it disconnected. 

The garage he broke into was apparently the domain of an angry chipmunk named Harley, and Tony asked for a watch and a tuna fish sandwich when all he wanted was to go home. He got a limited edition Dora the Explorer watch and no sandwich, instead, which wasn’t bad for the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. 

* * *

_bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun_

_and yanks immortal stars awry?_

* * *

When Steve reached Camp Lehigh and saw his ghosts running rampant among the crumbled facades and wrecked bunkers, he had two SHIELD assassins at his sides and his shield at his back. Memories screamed in his face, pounded at the back of his mind: Peggy, shouting at the recruits who had decided to think with the piece of flesh between their legs instead of between their ears; Bucky’s smile, which was already beginning to fade from his memory; Howard Stark’s manic rambling that reminded him, now, of Tony. 

(they were both dead now)

Clint’s fingers twitched at his bow, and he seemed to be restraining himself from finding high ground. Natasha pressed a hand to Steve’s shoulder, her steady eyes framed by the straight waves of her hair. “You up for this?”

Steve dipped his head, breathed through Bucky’s smile, _ Tony’s _ smile, the way he flicked through his holograms while verbally sparring with JARVIS, the way he lit up when talking about Iron Man. 

_ he won’t do that anymore, _ a cruel voice in the back of his head whispered. _ he can’t do anything anymore. he’s dead dead dead deaddeaddeaddeaddead DEAD. _

_No._ A Stark hadn’t given up on Steve after seventy years. Steve wouldn’t give up on another Stark after less than a day. 

“Yeah,” Steve said in answer to Natasha’s question. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Steve knocked the lock free of the door, and knocked the lock free of the secrets that had been hiding in this warehouse for seventy years. Arnim Zola flickered to life on the screens, greeting them smugly by their real names. He hadn’t known Natasha’s birth name was Natalia; he had known that Clint’s was Clinton. He was surprised the archer didn’t shoot the screen on principle. 

He spoke smugly of subterfuge and illness, of a terror group so cleverly hidden by an American intelligence organization. SHIELD had been infected the whole time, blah, blah, blah. 

Howard Stark’s face flickered on screen, his features crossed out and the word DECEASED printed across the file. Blueprints of the helicarriers, marked TERMINATED, briefly showed before they were abandoned, replaced by a picture of Fury, reading PENDING. 

“Hey, douchebag, shut up, we _ know,” _ Clint interrupted, looking an inch from shooting the screen. “Whee, Winter Soldier, Project Insight, yahoo.” He waved his hands around unenthusiastically in the universal gesture for _ hooray. _“Why do you think like half of your troops have gone dark?”

Even pixelated, Zola’s face still managed to display a proper amount of shock. 

Clint was right. None of the information that Zola had so far divulged wasn’t anything new. The problem that they were supposed to be solving was that they didn’t know what Project Insight _ was. _ Old files spoke of plans for helicarriers equipped with firepower to wipe out anyone who stood in Hydra’s way. Helicarriers that were equipped with repulsor technology— _ Stark _ repulsor technology. That hadn’t gotten off the ground after the visit from their future selves had warned them of SHIELD’s more tentacle-y dark side, as Tony had so eloquently put it. 

That project would _ never _ get off the ground now, Hydra or no. The thought made Steve nauseous. 

Natasha’s jaw was set, and Clint was balanced on the balls of his feet. Guns at Natasha’s hips, bow at Clint’s back. It made Steve feel a little better. 

“Then you must know what is coming,” Zola said smugly, regaining some of his composure. “Why do you sit idly here whilst the Soldier has already been activated and our project has reached completion?”

_ Bucky _ was Steve’s first thought. _ Project? _ was his second. 

“Project?” Natasha repeated, apparently following his line of thought. “You mean Project Insight? The helicarriers? Those were scrapped—and besides, Tony Stark is _ dead.” _

Zola tittered, the speakers echoing his amusement in a hissing, staticy parody of a laugh. “You are slipping, my dear Natalia,” he said, and Natasha clenched her fists like she was considering putting a hole in the screen. “Hydra has evolved. Project Insight was pushed _forwards._ We have moved beyond the prototype… superior in some ways, of course, but there is freedom in a lack of liability.”

“The helicarriers,” Natasha breathed, looking at Clint. “The files that Fury couldn’t access. Pierce met with the WSC after Fury terminated Insight. What if…”

“He could have reactivated the project,” Clint agreed, his hand clenching tight on his bow. “But without Fury finding out… that would be impossible.”

Clint was right. Fury missing something that important was as likely as the sun not rising in the morning. 

“Nothing is impossible,” Zola sneered. “Especially for Hydra.”

Clint didn’t seem too preoccupied with that, instead demanding, “What’s on the drive?”

“Project Insight requires… insight,” Zola snapped. “So I wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind of algorithm—what does it do?” Natasha asked, her voice needle-sharp. The soft edges of the striped hoodie that she wore belied the harsh lines of her shoulders, her neck. 

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately,” here Zola paused, indulging in a blurry, pixelated smirk, “you shall be too dead to hear it.”

Blast doors rumbled to life, shutting them into the decrepit warehouse. Steve flung his shield desperately at the rapidly-closing gap, but too late. Clint already had an arrow fully nocked, but he didn’t let fly. Natasha had her phone out, her eyebrows forming a hard line of tension. “Guys, we got a bogey. Short-range ballistic. 30 seconds tops.”

“Who fired it?” Steve demanded. 

Natasha tilted her head wryly. “SHIELD.”

“I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain.”

“There,” Clint pointed out, gesturing at a grate built into the concrete. The beeping from Natasha’s phone grew louder, more frantic, as her gaze caught on one of the monitors. “Hop in.”

“Admit it, it’s better this way.”

Natasha leapt into the narrow gap. Clint stared wide-eyed at a flickering image of Coulson’s face, reading NEUTRALIZED. 

“_Barton!” _Steve snapped. Clint seemed to shake off the daze that he’d fallen into, and he made to join them before he whipped his gaze back to the computers. 

The drive was still in the port. 

“You and I are both…”

Clint dove. 

Steve screamed his name again.

“_Out of time.” _

Steve _ was _ out of time. He dove for the grate, covering Natasha with his body and then his shield. Even though the roar of the missile, he heard Clint’s boots skid on the concrete as he hopefully dove for cover. 

“_Clint!” _ he heard Natasha scream, and then it all went blank. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sir, Alexander Pierce has taken control of SHIELD and has reactivated Project Insight,” JARVIS continued. “It appears that the helicarriers will be launched in approximately twelve hours.”
> 
> “How?” Tony snapped breathlessly. “The propellers—”
> 
> “It appears that SHIELD—or rather, HYDRA—has appropriated Ivan Vanko’s repulsor technology.”
> 
> “Fuck,” Tony muttered, then louder, “Fuck!”
> 
> “There was a missile strike ordered against them at Camp Lehigh, New Jersey. However, there are no confirmed casualties. They are okay, sir.”
> 
> “Okay,” Tony breathed out, clenching his fingers forcefully around his upper arms to still their shaking. “Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the long wait!! life hit me like a freight train... BUT! this chapter is so long that I hope it makes up for it! I'm hoping that the next chapter won't take as long, and I'll try as hard as possible to keep my flow of writing going. 
> 
> so here we are, exactly 2 months since my last update, back again! i hope you guys enjoy!

When Tony ran his fingers along the edge of one of the bomb shadows splayed across the wall, he thought of ripped-out hearts, of flickering, shrinking portals, and an army floating in empty space with no air to breathe, to scream. 

Harley’s words rang in his ears: there were six victims, but only five marks. The sixth hadn’t gotten a shadow, because he had gone to hell. 

(the sixth hadn’t gotten a shadow, because he was left alone in empty space with no air to breathe, to scream, because he deserved to go to hell anyways)

“You know what this reminds me of?” Harley asked. Tony didn’t want to hear it, not at all, and he said so, but Harley ignored him. 

“That portal, the one in New York?”

Tony staggered away. He rubbed snow on his face, clutched at his chest, and did his best to think of Steve instead. Steve, who was in DC, who had to have gotten Tony’s call _ he had to. _He was expecting Tony to come back. He would. 

Chad Davis’s mother, sitting alone at the bar, shoulders tense, was Tony’s only option. She spun dog tags between her fingers, showed him a file with MIA printed in the corner, before his arms were twisted behind his back by Homeland Security. The woman who had liked his watch’s veins glowed orange. The sheriff screamed when she burned him alive. 

Tony bolted. He taunted her, luring her, get her away from the people get her _ away. _ Then Tony stuttered to a stop.

The dickbag who had put Happy into a coma saluted Tony with his coffee cup before he tossed the contents aside.

Tony sprinted. It was awkward running with his hands behind him, but he managed, he had to manage. A gunshot rang out, shattering the shop window behind him, and Tony ducked behind the trunk of a car with some hillbilly lying flat on the ground. 

“Crazy, right?” Tony said.

“Yeah,” the other man agreed.

“Watch this.”

Tony sent himself bodily through the window, because he had to get them away from these people; he had brought them here, it was _ his fault. _

Their fight was destructive, scrambling, and Tony almost brained himself on four different countertops. Dora the Explorer hissed about cheap tricks and cheesy one-liners, and Tony thought about how accurate that was. That was all he was, really; he blew things up in a flashy suit, said something clever, and pretended he was a hero. 

(he shouldn’t get a shadow; he should be in hell)

She bared her teeth, molten white, in a mockery of a smile. Tony left her dangling from the electrical lines on the street.

The water tower dropped, sweeping Tony through the shattered metal and broken wood, and he was stuck he was trapped he was stuck he was trapped. The Extremis man sneered at him and said, “Anyway,” he picked up Harley and braced a molten hand against his chest. “Kid, what would you like for Christmas?”

“Mr. Stark, I am _ so sorry,” _ Harley said, and the Extremis guy frowned.

“No, no, no. I think he was trying to say, _ I want my goddamn file.” _

Tony ignored him. “Remember what I told you about bullies?” 

Tony vaguely wondered if he was the _ kid _ that Stark from the future had been so distraught about. He hoped not—this kid had spunk. 

(_You wanna know what happened? You wanna know what he did? He turned to me, and he told me that he didn’t want to go. He _ begged _ me. And I told him that it was going to be okay right before he _ fell apart in my arms)

(his arms had been shaking, and his voice trembled, and he must have known that it should have been him, he didn’t deserve a shadow, he should be in hell)

Tony blasted the man’s head through and tried not to think of burned-out lungs and nebulae in distant space.

When he drove away, saw Harley’s poor attempt at convincing him to stay, that only put a stronger inkling in his brain that this could be the kid that Stark had cared so much about. And that only solidified the determination to stay as far away from Harley as possible. Maybe then he’d survive.

Tony flipped over the file, and the black Sharpie that had bled through the thin paper gave him the final clue he needed. Rhodey was in Pakistan for a reason that Tony couldn’t fathom, and he ignored the distant pain in his chest because the last time Tony had died, Rhodey hadn’t rested until he found Tony, and this time he was flying missions for the Air Force.

The TV-Crew-Gary-Guy was vaguely irritating, and the tattoo that he had was nauseating, but then Killian’s face flickered onto the blurry screen, and the last piece clicked into place.

JARVIS told him that the Mandarin was broadcasting from Miami, then continued, “Sir, there is… other news.”

“What do you mean, _ other news?” _ Tony demanded. 

“Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff, and Agent Barton have been declared fugitives of SHIELD. Director Fury has also been killed in action.”

Tony jerked the car onto the shoulder of the highway. Over the panic that seized his chest, Tony faintly heard Harley say, “Also, the armor’s not charging.”

Tony bolted upright, fumbling with the door handle and sinking to the icy pavement. Spots danced in his vision as he struggled to breathe around the vice in his chest. The arc reactor felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

“Sir, Alexander Pierce has taken control of SHIELD and has reactivated Project Insight,” JARVIS continued. “It appears that the helicarriers will be launched in approximately twelve hours.”

“How?” Tony snapped breathlessly. “The propellers—”

“It appears that SHIELD—or rather, HYDRA—has appropriated Ivan Vanko’s repulsor technology.”

“Fuck,” Tony muttered, then louder, “Fuck!”

“There was a missile strike ordered against them at Camp Lehigh, New Jersey. However, there are no confirmed casualties. They are okay, sir.”

“Okay,” Tony breathed out, clenching his fingers forcefully around his upper arms to still their shaking. “Okay. The Mark 42?”

“The power source is questionable at best. I’m unsure that it will succeed at revitalizing the Mark 42.”

“What’s questionable about electricity?” he burst out, his breathing stuttering for the nth time. “Oh, God, not again.”

Harley asked him if he was having another attack, then defensively told Tony that he hadn’t even mentioned New York, which was helpful.

“You’re a mechanic, right?” Harley said, and Tony managed a breath.

“So why don’t you just build something?”

* * *

Steve woke abruptly to the sound of flames licking at old wood and the settling of plaster dust. 

He took a moment to take inventory of his injuries: nothing broken, maybe a few bruises and minor cuts. Overall, not bad at all, all things considered. 

Natasha shifted under him and groaned a little, and as though he had been struck by a bolt of lightning, he remembered.

_ Clint. _

Steve scrambled to his feet, using his shield to shove a concrete slab aside. “Clint!” he screamed. “Hawkeye! _ Clint!” _

“Here,” a voice croaked, so quiet that Steve barely picked it up with his enhanced hearing. Steve whirled and saw a bloody hand reaching out of a gap in the rubble. 

“Clint,” Steve breathed, hurrying over and ignoring the way his sneakers scraped unpleasantly on the concrete. “Clint, hey, are you okay?”

The archer was pinned under a cracked slab of concrete and bleeding heavily from a cut running from his hairline to his eyebrow. Steve wedged both of his hands underneath the stone and lifted hard. Clint managed to roll out and groaned, pressing a hand to his temple. 

“You okay?” Steve asked. Clint made an abortive attempt to nod before turning an unhealthy shade of white.

“Will be. Is Nat…?”

“She’s fine,” Steve confirmed. “Still out, though.”

Clint’s expression darkened. “They’ll be sending reconnaissance right now. Trying to confirm that we’re dead. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Steve’s ears picked up the hum of quinjet engines, and he nodded, and offered Clint a hand to get to his feet. 

* * *

Four hours later, Steve knocked on Sam Wilson’s door with two SHIELD assassins.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” Natasha admitted, and Clint laughed a little. 

“Or dead,” he said. 

They’d gotten the news that Fury had been killed by a masked man with a metal arm _ (Bucky) _when they got back to DC. Maria Hill sent a text to Natasha and told her to stay away, but they really had nowhere else to go. The only other place they could have gone was Avengers Tower, but with Tony’s ghost still lingering on the edges of Steve’s mind, he was remiss to even set foot inside. 

Another hour saw Clint staring at Sam as he revealed that he’d been involved in the Falcon project with unmasked awe in his eyes. “I saw you once,” he said, and Sam raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Undercover op,” Clint continued. “You and your partner came swooping in from the sky, and I almost missed my shot. It was impressive. But the project was terminated.”

“And the last one is behind an eight-foot steel wall,” Sam allowed. 

Natasha and Clint exchanged a look. “That won’t be a problem.”

“SHIELD still has custody of Sitwell,” Steve recalled, not questioning their certainty. “Most of HYDRA is eradicated by now, it’s just Pierce running things… you think Maria can smuggle him out?”

“Undoubtedly,” Natasha said wryly. “I’ll tell her to meet us on a rooftop.”

“Why?” Sam asked. 

“So I can kick him off it. I always hated that guy.”

* * *

_ Blow king to beggar and queen to seem _

_ (blow friend to fiend: blow space to time) _

* * *

Tony stared at the Mandarin—Trevor—for a long time. _ I’m an actor… it’s all fake… he created me. _

Then the Extremis-douchebag hit him over the head. 

_ Killian. It was always Killian. _

_ Steve— _

Darkness.

He came to tied to a bed, which was an unpleasant repetition of some episodes of his youth—that was to say, a few years ago. Maya Hansen sat in front of him, typing at some sort of computer.

His wrists ached, and there was blood running into his mouth. Maya insisted that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she was close to fixing Extremis, and Tony knew she was wrong, because he had been in her place. He could tell she was affected by what he had said to her, but Killian came instead. 

“The early bird gets the worm,” he mused, “but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

He came right up to Tony’s face, and the only thing he could think was _ your breath smells like you’re the second mouse. _

Killian waxed poetic about _ desperation _ and subtlety and anonymity, and Tony was only half-listening, too preoccupied with shooting Maya pleading glances from across the room. 

Then, Pepper’s image flickered into life, and Tony’s breath froze in his lungs. 

“At this moment, the body is trying to decide whether to accept Extremis or just give up,” Killian mused, a smarmy grin fixed onto his face as though he hadn’t just infected one of Tony’s best friends with Extremis. “And if it does give up, I have to say, the detonation is quite spectacular. But until that point, it’s really just a lot of pain.”

Tony jerked his wrists again, heedless of the pain and the new blood dripping down his wrists. Killian rose to his feet. “We haven’t even talked salary yet!” he exclaimed, then, in a sudden mood swing that Tony hadn’t anticipated, he wrapped a glowing hand around Tony’s throat. 

“What kind of _ perk package _ are you thinking of?” he hissed furiously.

“Let him go!” Maya Hansen insisted from behind Killian, her voice tremulous. 

Killian paused, his orange gaze more annoyed than frightened. “Hold on, hold on. Maya…”

“1200 CCs, a dose half this size, I’m dead.”

Killian sighed, looking to Tony as if he could relate, as if Killian was anything more than a psychopath. “It’s times like this my temper is tested, somewhat.”

He met Tony’s gaze and shot her in the chest. She choked on the blood filling up her lungs before she collapsed. Another wound carved itself into Tony’s heart.

They were more similar than he had thought.

“The good news is,” Killian told Tony, apparently unaffected by what he had just done, “a high-level position has just been vacated.”

Tony just stared. Finally, he settled on, “You are a maniac.”

“No,” Killian countered. “I’m a visionary.

“But I do own a maniac. And he takes the stage tonight.”

Tony bowed his head to his chest, his shoulders aching, his eyes burning, and tried not to look at Maya Hansen’s corpse lying a few feet away. 

He hung there for what felt like hours, listening to Wannabe-Thor and Generic Creep #5 engage in casual, boring conversation as though they weren’t guarding a captive Iron Man in a decrepit old mansion in Miami. Finally, _ finally, _ the watch went off. 

“What’s the mileage count between Tennessee and Miami?” he asked, because he knew JARVIS was coming.

“832 miles,” Wannabe-Thor said proudly. 

Creep #5 smashed the watch under his foot, and Tony sighed. “And _ that’s _why I’m gonna kill you first.”

“You’re zip-tied to a bed,” he told Tony as if he didn’t know that already, and then the gauntlet closed over his fist.

“Told you!” Tony said, and then he opened his palm and blasted him through the head.

The two doofus guards that he had warned to leave before he killed them, well, he killed them. Or knocked them out, Tony wasn’t exactly paying close attention to their wellbeing. He angled his gun and his repulsor, and when no more armor arrived, he said to himself, “Where’s the rest?”

Despite the lack of bulletproof armor, Tony thought he did pretty well. The combination of the repulsors and the semi-automatic worked nicely to take out the however-many armed guards that had come rushing to defend their prized trophy. Tony didn’t much care, he just had to get out, to get to Steve, to Pepper—

After the rest of the armor arrived, JARVIS highlighted War Machine jetting into the sky away from him. Tony tried to fly after who he hoped was Rhodey, but his repulsors sputtered pathetically and died. “Aw, crap.”

An unknown caller pushed through. “Tony,” Rhodey’s voice said. 

“Rhodey, please tell me that was you in the suit,” Tony pleaded, just hoping that once, just _ once, _ things would go his way. He had so much to do: he had to stop Killian’s plot to take over the modern world, had to save Pepper, had to tear HYDRA out from SHIELD, had to make sure Steve was okay, _ Steve— _

“No, it wasn’t,” Rhodey said, and Tony wilted internally. Why could nothing ever be easy? “You got yours?”

“Mmm, kind of,” Tony said. “Meet me inside, I’ve got someone for you to meet.”

* * *

_ —when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, _

_ the single secret will still be man _

* * *

Natasha did, true to her word, kick Sitwell off the roof. Clint remained nearly stone-faced through the haze of pain that Steve was sure he was living in. Steve wouldn’t have noticed anything it if he hadn’t been running missions with Clint for about a year, but Clint’s lips twitched when Sitwell shrieked as he fell. 

“Works every time,” he remarked idly to Natasha as Sam, looking impressive in his goggles and metal wings, dumped Sitwell back on the roof, spewing pleas and platitudes. 

“Zola’s algorithm is a list!” he squealed. Natasha smiled serenely. 

Fifteen minutes later, they were driving up some freeway that Steve didn’t know—Sam was in the drivers seat, a consequence of his experience in DC and Steve’s lack thereof. Natasha and Clint sat in the back, Sitwell wedged in between them. Neither Clint nor Sitwell seemed particularly pleased with that arrangement, but Natasha was unflappable as ever. 

“Oh, God, Pierce is gonna kill me,” Sitwell was muttering in between his explanations of Zola’s algorithm. “He’s gonna kill me!”

“Yeah, well, we’ll kill you first,” Clint told him evenly. “So keep talking.”

“Insight’s launching in sixteen hours, we’re cutting it a little bit close here,” Natasha said, sticking her face in between the front seats. 

“We can use Sitwell’s biometrics to get access to the helicarriers,” Steve said, meeting her eye in the rearview mirror. “We can shut them down from there. If they lose access to the satellites—”

“You’ll _ what?” _ Sitwell squawked before there was a thud on the roof. 

The skylight shattered, and a metal arm yanked Sitwell out of the car right into the path of heavy traffic. 

“Bucky,” Steve breathed. Despite the situation, he felt a brief moment of hope. 

Natasha’s expression was the opposite. Her mouth drew into a frown that could only be borne of pure, genuine fear. 

Steve pulled the emergency brake hard as Bucky fired through the roof: Clint pressed himself as far under the seat as he could manage, and Steve shoved the shield at him. Natasha leapt to get into the passenger seat with him. Her weight pressed uncomfortably against his stomach, but his attention was fixed on the figure crouched outside on the freeway.

He wore dark goggles and a mask that more resembled a muzzle than any form of actual protective equipment. His hair was shaggy, and Bucky had always hated long hair, why would they keep it so long—

He couldn’t lose this. He’d just lost Tony, and that was an aching wound despite the fact that he’d known the man for only a year. Steve had known Bucky better than he’d known himself. But he had heard the warning of his future self, and this wounded animal kneeling outside wasn’t his friend. 

Natasha raised her gun, ready to fire, and then a heavily armored car slammed into the back of Sam’s Chevy. It drove them forward, the tires screaming a complaint, and Bucky vaulted back onto the roof. His feet shattered the back window. Clint grunted as shattered glass exploded all over him, and Natasha bent over and groped for her gun. 

Sam gunned the gas, but then Bucky’s metal arm (God, he lost an _ arm) _plunged through the windshield and tore the steering wheel off the car. 

“_ Shit!” _ Sam screamed, and pressed his foot harder on the gas. Natasha got a grip on her gun and started firing through the roof, and there was a telltale _ thud _ as Bucky rolled off the car onto the armored truck behind them. 

The car hit them in the rear one more time, and Sam’s poor Chevy spun out. Steve frantically wrapped an arm around both of them and used his shield to knock the car door off. He heard more than saw Clint kick the door open and leap out, shooting a grappling arrow at a building across the street. Their momentum sent them skidding across the highway, and Steve felt the vibrations of the shield scraping against the asphalt down to his bones. 

They lost Sam halfway through, but when Steve managed to get to his feet, Bucky was holding a grenade launcher. Steve shoved Natasha out of the way and took it square on the shield.

He felt momentum, something glass crash into his back, and then darkness.

* * *

Rhodey, as Tony had predicted, took an immediate liking to Trevor. 

Earlier, he’d managed to locate a battery with wires that were compatible with the Mark 42 and its picky charging methods, and now he carried it with him, reminding him of desperately holding a car battery above water as they forced his head down—

Rhodey smashed through the window and shot the two armed guards dead, and Trevor jerked awake at the sounds of gunshots. He eyed Tony dazedly. “What’ve you come as?” he asked blankly, and Rhodey slammed him back in his easy chair. 

“You make a move, I break your face,” he warned, and Tony barely withheld a laugh. 

“I never thought people had been hurt,” Trevor said in a surprisingly coherent manner. “They lied to me.”

“This is the Mandarin?” Rhodey demanded incredulously, looking back at Tony. 

“I know, it’s… it’s embarrassing,” Tony said, waving a hand.

Trevor stuck a hand out to shake Rhodey’s. “Hi, Trevor, Trevor Slatt—” Rhodey swatted his hand away, but all he did was hesitate a moment before finishing, “—ery. I know, I’m shorter in person, a bit smaller. Everybody says that. But, um, hey, if you’re here to arrest me, there’s some people I’d like to roll on—”

Despite the legitimate hilarity of their situation, Tony interrupted. “Here’s how it works, Meryl Streep. You tell him where Pepper is and he stops doing it.”

Trevor stared blankly at Tony, justifiably, as Rhodey currently wasn’t doing anything except levelling a disgusted stare at everything in the room, but then he pressed the still-hot muzzle of his gun against Trevor’s ear, and the junkie immediately began spewing out apologies.

Rhodey nodded faux-seriously at him and Tony nearly laughed again.

“I don’t know about any Pepper, but I know about the plan.”

“Spill.”

Trevor’s information turned out to have practically nothing useful in it, as it was interspersed with cheers for some inane soccer team that Tony had never bothered to pay attention to. Something about a big boat and the coast.

“Tony, I swear to God, I’m gonna blow his face off!” Rhodey snapped. 

“Oh, and this next bit might include the vice president as well,” Trevor said cheerfully. “Is that… is that important?”

Oh, boy. 

Tony jerked his head for Rhodey to come over and converse, and muttered, “So?”

“What are we gonna do?” Rhodey hissed. “I mean, we don’t have any means of transport.”

A metaphorical lightbulb dinged in Tony’s head, and he turned to look at Trevor again. “Hey, Ringo. Didn’t you say something about a lovely speedboat?”

* * *

_ what if a keen of a lean wind flays _

_ screaming hills with sleet and snow: _

* * *

Sitting in a HYDRA detention van, watching Natasha bleed out and Clint jerk futilely against his bonds, Steve bowed his head. This had been because of _ him. _ They’d known about Bucky, they’d known what he was capable of, and yet they’d still been caught horribly, terrifyingly, off-guard. 

“She’s bleeding out!” Clint insisted desperately. “Come on, even though you’re HYDRA shitbags doesn’t mean you’re going to let the Black Widow bleed out, come _ on—” _

One of the HYDRA agents tazed the other, and Maria Hill pulled off her helmet. 

“God, that thing was squeezing my brain,” she complained. 

Steve gaped at her. Natasha breathed out a laugh. 

Maria noticed Sam and looked at him blankly. “Who’s this guy?”

They drilled their way out through a hole in the bottom of the truck and made their way to some old, abandoned manor. It was covered in curling wild vines that nearly masked the dusty stained glass windows. Recent tire tracks and a few SHIELD-issue cars parked outside were the only signs of habitation. 

Steve still wasn’t sure how the hell Fury had survived, still wasn’t sure how the hell he’d ended up in a secret SHIELD bunker, plotting the downfall of HYDRA, but here he was. 

“We could crash them,” Natasha offered, gritting her teeth as a SHIELD medic made another stitch in her shoulder. “Override their programming, disconnect them from their satellites, then get them to fire at each other.”

“There will be SHIELD personnel everywhere,” Steve disagreed, immediately dismissing the idea. “Plus, that kind of collateral… three helicarriers in the Potomac would be hell to clean up.”

“Is it still in the cards to not let them launch?” Clint asked, twirling an arrow between his fingers. 

“No,” Hill interjected briskly. “Launch sequences have already begun. If we tamper with them, well… the weapons are already primed to fire.”

“What if we let them launch?” Sam burst out suddenly, and everyone in the room turned to stare. 

“Sam—” Steve started, because _ in the name of the Lord, what was he thinking? _ but Sam waved his hands frantically. 

“Just hear me out,” he said. “The carriers launch. We infiltrate them and plant the chips that Fury’s got. But instead of them just shooting each other… what if they just fly away?”

“The helicarriers aren’t designed for suborbital travel,” Fury said, but there was a twinkle in his eye. 

“Just send them to the Arctic!” Sam said. “There’s got to be a spot where the weapons can’t reach anyone of interest to Insight just in case they come back online.”

“There is,” Natasha put in. “I spotted it in Zola’s notes, a weakness that he was afraid someone would exploit. I can write down the coordinates.”

Steve stared at Sam. He had clearly underestimated him: while he really liked the pararescue vet, he hadn’t thought that there was that much of a brain behind him. He was clearly wrong. 

Sam clearly interpreted that the wrong way. “Is that… a good idea?”

Fury glanced at Natasha and said, “I’ve got a different job for you. Don’t worry, you’ll like it.”

Natasha quirked an eyebrow. Maria had pulled out her phone, barking at whoever was on the other end to _ get their top programmers, stat! _

“Yeah, man,” Clint said. He’d stopped fiddling with the arrow. “Yeah, it is.”

Natasha pulled her shirt back on, the medic having finished his work, and looked Steve square in the face. “What about the Sol—Bucky?”

The familiar pit opened in Steve’s stomach. He twisted his mouth in thought. “I know he can get better,” he settled on. “I was told so. And they’re definitely going to send him to defend the helicarriers to try and distract me. I’ll try my best to get him into custody, but…” he sighed heavily, and the words stuck in his throat as they came out. “I can’t let him override my judgement. If it comes to millions of innocents or him, there’s no contest.”

Natasha dipped her head. “That’s... very brave of you.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told that a time or two,” he told her, and she laughed. 

“Director, what’ve you got Nat doing?” Clint asked. Fury grunted as he shifted positions.

“She’s gonna deal with Pierce,” he said, and a slow, mischievous smile spread across Natasha’s face. 

“God help him,” Sam said, but he was smiling, too. 

* * *

_ strangled valleys by ropes of thing _

_ and stifles forests in white ago? _

* * *

Tony remotely shoved the stupid Extremis guy against the wall of Air Force One and snarled, “_ The President!” _

He waved it away easily, one glowing hand moving airily in a way that was far too dismissive of such a catastrophic turn of events. He grabbed the arm of the 42 and jerked it away from his body. “Try the jet stream,” he taunted. “Speaking of which, go fish!”

Something detonated in the far room, and Tony activated the unibeam and left Extremis-douchebag sitting with a hole through his chest. “Walk away from that,” Tony told him, and burst through the cabin door in time to watch a stewardess be pulled from the plane through a gash torn through the belly of the plane.

Oh, God.

“How many in the air?”

“Thirteen, sir.”

“How many can I carry?”

“Four, sir.”

Tony ran through possible solutions: there was no way he could disassemble the suit and get it to carry everyone, no way he could make several trips in the time that they had…

Oh. 

He shot forwards, pushing the repulsors as hard as they could, and grabbed one of the flight attendants, a screaming woman, in a crushing embrace, jetting further down towards the rest of the unwilling skydivers. 

She didn’t seem to take comfort in the Iron Man hug, instead, she continued to scream. “Slow down. Slow down, relax. What’s your name? Heather?”

She didn’t react, only screaming something the lines of _ oh God no _ when the Air Force One plane exploded above them. 

Another guy tumbled past them in an ill-fitting suit, and Tony refocused himself. “Listen to me,” he ordered, channeling his best Steve Rogers impression. “See that guy?”

She turned her head to look, which was good, as his unwitting accomplice had just confirmed that she was coherent. “I’m gonna swing by, you’re just gonna grab him,” he continued as though it were the easiest thing in the world. “You got it?”

Her response was lost to the wind, but he was pretty sure it was affirmative. She yelped again once he accelerated downwards, but he didn’t really blame her. JARVIS pulled up a view of all of the thirteen people on the HUD as Tony said, “I’ll electrify your arm,” and JARVIS had already moved on, pulling up an optimal charge, “you won’t be able to open your hand. We can do this, Heather.”

She let go and only clutched Tony with one arm, which he fully respected. The first time that he’d scooped Clint up in an embrace like this, he’d clung to him, refusing to let go for half of the trip. 

She lost her grip on the guy the first time, but they caught up again and she caught his arm. Tony blew out a long breath. “Easy, see?” he said. “Eleven more to go.”

They seemed only caught up in screaming, so he figured he’d fill the silence with his own meaningless chatter. “Remember that game called Barrel of Monkeys?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s what we’re gonna do."

“Eighteen-thousand feet,” JARVIS warned.

Six of them connected with each other, and the suit jerked as another woman bashed into his back. “10,000 feet,” JARVIS reported.

He grabbed another guy with his only remaining hand, but his new arm-guy lost grip on the next. “Come on, come on, come on,” Tony chanted, and he knew he wasn’t helping, but seriously, “_ come on!” _

“400 feet,” JARVIS warned, and Tony groaned inwardly. “200 feet, sir.”

“He’s a chunky monkey, let’s get him.”

Chunky-monkey stared up at them, his teeth bared, ready to scream again. “Hello,” Tony told him, and then they all connected _ thank God thank God thank God _, and his flaps deployed, dumping them all into the water. 

He breathed an inward sigh of relief. “All right, JARVIS,” he began, and then the HUD went static around the sound of a truck horn. 

“That came out of nowhere,” he commented to himself as Rhodey burst into the cabin.

“Give me some good news, man,” he implored.

Tony dropped his arms. “I think they all made it.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Yeah, but I missed the President.” Tony turned around to look at Rhodey, who sighed and got to his feet. 

“You couldn’t save the President with the suit, how are we gonna save Pepper with nothing?” he demanded. 

Tony clicked his teeth together a few times, then said, “Say, JARVIS, is it _ that time?” _

“The House Party Protocol, sir?” JARVIS asked carefully. 

“Correct.”

* * *

_ Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind _

_ (blow pity to envy and soul to mind) _

* * *

“Where’d you get the suit, Steve?” Clint asked wryly as they snuck carefully through the window into the Triskelion. 

“You think I don’t have extra suits in hidden places?” Steve ducked as a camera swiveled suddenly to face him, grateful for the muted colors of his stealth suit. “Besides, the red, white, and blue is a little much for this situation.”

“It’s iconic,” Sam protested.

“It’s constricting.”

“It makes your butt look good,” Clint offered, and both of them stopped to stare for a moment. “What?”

Steve rolled his eyes, ignoring the Tony Stark-esque ass comment. “Keep moving.”

A few minutes and close calls later, they were outside the door of communications. 

Maria Hill, her voice brusque over the comms, said, “Blasting their frequency in three… two… one… now.”

Steve picked up the cries of protest of the communications workers as they ripped out their earpieces. A moment later, a kid who couldn’t be more than twenty-five opened the door and came face-to-face with Clint’s bow.

“Get away from your stations,” Hawkeye ordered, his voice flinty. “Do it now.”

They all hastily rose from their seats, raising their hands high in the air. This would have been the perfect time for a snarky Tony Stark joke, but instead, Steve just paced forward, his mouth a hard line. 

He bent over one of the stations with a microphone, took a deep breath, and pressed the BROADCAST button. 

“Attention, all SHIELD agents,” he began. “This is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days…” 

...and all his thoughts flew out the window. All he could think of was the discord in SHIELD as entire cohorts of HYDRA were eliminated, the confusion, as new hires from the FBI, the CIA, the DoD, all came flooding in. 

He thought about Tony’s smile, so bright despite everything that had happened to him, everything he’d gone through. The way that he looked at Steve when he thought Steve wasn’t looking, the way that he hugged whatever that was next to him when he fell asleep, that one time when that thing had happened to be Steve’s arm. That manic energy of his, how he tried to find Bucky and dig into SHIELD’s files to root out HYDRA, because he knew how much it meant, not just to Steve, but to the world at large. 

No one could ever know any of that now. How hard he’d worked. How perfect he was. 

“Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down,” he continued after a slightly-too-long moment. “But I think it’s time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was… it’s been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader.” 

Clint let out a whispered curse as he studied one of the security feeds. Steve went on. “HYDRA is launching their new helicarriers today, and if we let them launch, millions of people could die,” and here, he took a long breath. “The Avengers are scattered. We lost Iron Man yesterday, and God knows we could use his help now. But I don’t have Iron Man. All I have is you guys.

“So be Avengers with us. Help us take down HYDRA before they destroy the world as we know it. You’re… we’re all Avengers.”

“Did you write that down first, or was it off the top of your head?” Sam asked him wryly. Clint snorted. 

“Way to take away any significance of my title, man.”

“You’ll get over it,” Steve told him past the lump in his throat. “Let’s go.”

“Cap,” Clint warned, and pointed at the screen. There were HYDRA agents in mission control, dressed all in black with masks over their faces. One of the techs had a gun pointed at the back of his head, and Sharon Carter had her gun aimed squarely at the offender. 

“Depends on where you’re standing,” she hissed, her voice staticy over the speakers. The masked agent raised his arms in surrender before one of his teammates fired at Sharon, driving everyone else to fire.

“Get to high ground,” Steve told Clint briefly, turning away from the screens. “Sam, with me.”

“They’re initiating launch,” Maria said tersely over comms. 

“How’d they keep all this secret from Fury?” Steve panted, jogging past the frankly insanely large bay. “This is huge.”

Maria sighed harshly. “This isn’t on the books at all. When security isn’t taken down, there are five secret doors and thirteen firewalls keeping this information behind locked doors. Fury knew something was up, he just didn’t know how big it was.” She sounded angry that she hadn’t noticed, either. 

“Hey, Cap,” Sam called as they burst out onto the tarmac. “How do we know the good guys from the bad guys?”

“If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad!” he shot back before throwing himself over a ledge on the platform into a gang of HYDRA agents. The bullets flying past his ears echoed themselves in the comms in his ear.

“I found the bad guys you were talking about,” Sam announced, his voice half-sucked away by the wind.

“You okay?” 

“I’m not dead yet.”

* * *

Tony’s feet slipped on the oil-slick ground as he scrambled after Pepper, clinging onto the wreckage of the booth of the boat swinging toward open water. 

“_ Get me a suit right now!” _ he ordered JARVIS shrilly as she went farther. Not her. Please not her. She was his best friend, his driving force, his—

“I’ll catch you!” he insisted, _ and he didn’t. _

“Shame,” Killian mused from across the walkway. “I would’ve caught her.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Tony breathed. “She was my best friend. You couldn’t have caught her, she never would’ve let you.”

He charged, and seriously considered attempting to deck Killian right where he stood. A voice that sounded like a combination of Pepper and Steve whispered in his head, _ no, stupid, look for a suit, that’s your advantage. Go for a suit. _

He dove between Killian’s legs and straight off the side of the walkway. His suit closed around him, and JARVIS said, “Sir, I have an update on Captain Rogers.”

“Hit me,” he said. “And run—run a scan for Pepper.”

JARVIS didn’t comment on the probability of her survival. Instead, he began on his report on Steve. “The uprooting of HYDRA has not gone exactly to plan,” he reported as Tony spun out the way of a blast of fire from Killian. “Sergeant Barnes has come into the field. Director Fury is dead—” Tony faltered in his turn and scraped against the hulk of the ship with a discordant screech.

“Fury is _ what?” _ he demanded. “No way. No _ way. _That guy is immortal. If I could fake my own death, then he definitely can.”

“You didn’t exactly do that on purpose, sir,” JARVIS said dryly, then an urgent note came into his voice. “Sir, look out—”

Killian slammed brutally into his back, turning the metal along Tony’s spine molten hot. He yelped, the repulsors cutting out, and he dropped like a stone. “Eject!” he managed, and the suit split itself open and let him fall just as Killian plunged a glowing fist straight through the arc reactor slot of the armor. 

The water approached him way too quickly for his liking, but the Firecracker suit caught him by the arm and enfolded him again. “Continue, JARVIS,” he ordered, and another explosion shook the ship before JARVIS highlighted the War Machine armor flying out of the scene, the President clinging to the side. 

“Tony, I’ve got the President and I’m heading out."

“Right,” Tony managed, and then Killian was back on him. 

“Captain Rogers, Maria Hill, Agents Barton and Romanoff, and FALCON veteran Sam Wilson have staged a coup to eliminate the last of HYDRA. But, sir…” JARVIS trailed off, and Tony had to divert his attention from his spiel to concentrate on Killian. 

Two suits later and a few burns later, Killian had his arm in a death grip, staring gleefully with glowing orange eyes, dragon tattoos fully exposed. “Here we are, on the roof,” he said, as though there were just meeting back up after Tony took a raincheck on their first meeting. He refrained from saying so, however, when Killian’s expression turned mutinous in the blink of an eye, and he raised a white-hot hand. 

The suit spat him out backwards as Killian split it in half, and Tony landed hard on his back. The arc reactor jarred in its casing, and his vision exploded into white spots. 

“Mark 42 inbound,” JARVIS interjected urgently, and Tony turned his head to look.

“I’ll be damned,” he said wryly, reveling for a moment in Killian’s perplexed moue. “The prodigal son returns.”

He knew that the stabilization calibrator was damaged from his multiple crashes in the poor suit, but it was still a little embarrassing when it crashed into the guardrail and fell apart. Tony rolled his eyes, remembering a last-ditch function he’d built into the prototype. “Whatever.”

“You really didn’t deserve her, Tony,” Killian said with the air of someone who had been wronged, which was just plain ridiculous. “It’s a pity. I was so close to having her perfect.”

Tony felt cold, mind-numbing fury build up in his core. Killian jumped down, bones flaring white in his legs before mending themselves in an instant. 

“She wasn’t mine to begin with,” Tony snarled. “And you’ve got it all wrong. She was already perfect.”

He stuck out an arm in an imitation of the first time he’d jabbed a finger at Steve two days ago. That felt like it was ten years ago, maybe more. God, _ Steve. _ He couldn’t wait to go home.

The Mark 42 wrapped itself around Killian, sending him stumbling back with the force of it. “JARVIS, do me a favor and blow Mark 42.”

Killian’s scream was muffled by the mask as it slammed over his face. 

The seams of the suit glowed white-hot, and Tony ran for the edge of the platform and dove. 

A suit caught him as the floor he’d been standing on burst into a fiery explosion, but he crashed into a supporting carabiner on his way down and went flying, half of the lighter suit coming off him. His back slammed forcefully against the tarmac of the barge, and he mentally rued the bruises that would be arching up his spine the next day.

Killian, groaning, absolutely coal-black with burns and smoldering with rage, stumbled to his feet amidst the fire. 

“No more false faces,” he managed through singed vocal chords. “You said you wanted the Mandarin… you’re looking right at him.” Killian was healing before his very eyes, and Tony resisted the urge to scooch backwards on his butt. “I am the Mandarin!” Killian roared melodramatically, spreading his ruined arms and looming over Tony. 

_ This is the end, _Tony thought, and then someone from behind Killian swatted him away with a heavy pipe. 

Pepper was glowing with Extremis, her hair hanging in her face, and Tony could cry with happiness right then and there. 

Killian got to his feet again, gasping, and raised a fist. Mark 35 came blasting through the firing zone, and Pepper shoved a glowing fist through it, then kicked a stray missile at Killian and ignited it. 

Tony stuck his earpiece connected to JARVIS as the ship rattled with the force of the explosion. “JARVIS, talk to me. What were you saying about Steve?”

“I’m afraid that Captain Rogers has embarked on something of a suicide mission,” JARVIS said gravely. “HYDRA completed three helicarriers under Director Fury’s nose and is in the process of launching now.”

“How?” Tony demanded, scrambling to his feet. Pepper turned to face him, eyes wild and shining, and muttered something about violence. “JARVIS, what are they going to do?”

Pepper stared at him, her eyebrows furrowed into a mix of a grimace and a squint. “Tony, what’s going on?”

Wordlessly, still listening to JARVIS, he opened his arms to her. She walked into his embrace, shaking, and she rested her chin against his shoulder—she was taller than him. 

“Captain Rogers has gone on somewhat of a mission to take down the helicarriers, and I’m afraid that they’re already gone. He’s still onboard.”

“Oh, no,” Tony said, squeezing Pepper’s shoulders once before letting go. “Shit. JARVIS, gimme a suit right now. Right now!” 

Pepper stepped back hurriedly as Mark 39, which happened to be a stealth suit with smooth, matte black shelling, landed next to them. “Sorry, Pep,” he said, already stepping inside. “I’ll send Rhodey after you. I need to—”

“Get to Steve,” she finished, smiling, but Tony was already gone.

* * *

_ —whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees, _

_ it’s they shall cry hello to the spring _

* * *

Steve stared at Bucky from across the catwalk, looking like a wounded animal ready to fight himself out of danger no matter what it took, and something panged deep in his stomach.

“People are gonna die, Buck,” he said helplessly, knowing in his heart that it was hopeless but trying anyway. “I can’t let that happen. Please… don’t make me do this."

Bucky stood there neutrally, feral eyes half-hidden by choppy hair. He didn’t move out of the way.

Steve took a deep breath and, deep in his heart, he felt acceptance. Bucky couldn’t be his priority: not when there were millions of lives at stake. He gritted his teeth, readying himself to throw his shield, before Bucky angled his body to catch it. 

He remembered the times Bucky had walked off his shield like it was nothing, caught it with one hand, and Steve stayed his hand. He used bodily momentum to feint up towards Bucky’s face, then caught his legs with the shield and sent him careening off the catwalk.

Steve sprinted, counting the seconds before Bucky could get to his feet and pull out his gun. He punched in the override code to access the satellite chips and ripped it out as quickly as he could. 

“Two minutes, Cap,” Hill said in his ear worriedly. “Alpha and bravo are locked. Also, there’s… something else.”

Red-hot pain tore through Steve’s thigh before he could respond, and his leg buckled before he could stop himself. Bucky was up on his feet, a wild look in his eye, pistol aimed at Steve. He pulled his shield off his back and onto his arm with one quick movement, crouching behind it. Three more bullets pinged off of it before Bucky gave up. Steve knew that the gun held 8 rounds, and Bucky had used four already. He’d have to bait him into using all of them before he could access the panel. 

“One minute.”

“Got incoming, Cap,” Clint warned, but Steve ignored him. He carefully shifted his shield to expose part of his side, and jerked it back once he heard the rapid _ bang bang _ of the gun. Two bullets left. 

“Thirty seconds, Cap.”

He’d have to risk it. He bolted to his feet suddenly, hoping to get Bucky to jerk enough that his aim would be off. He was lucky on the first shot: the bullet collided with the metal paneling of the central control module. The second skimmed his ribs, but he was _ out, thank God. _ Steve ripped the chip out of his belt and jammed it in as Hill said, “Ten seconds.”

“Charlie lock,” Steve breathed, and snapped the original data file in half. 

“Okay, Cap, get out of there,” Hill ordered, but Bucky had just reloaded his gun.

“Do it now,” Steve said. “Get the carriers out of here before they figure out an override.”

“Steve—” Hill began, but Clint interrupted her. 

“He’ll be fine, Hill,” he said, and he sounded like he knew something Steve didn’t. “I’ve got a guarantee.”

The helicarrier rocked suddenly as it lurched into motion, and Bucky stumbled over a metal strut and fell on his side. They were accelerating very fast: much faster than the helicarrier from the attack on New York had been, and Steve’s ears popped as they rose above the clouds. 

“I know you remember, Bucky!” Steve yelled from the catwalk, not daring to get down yet. “I know you know you know me.”

Bucky was still flat on his back, but the distressed, wild-animal look he got in his eye wasn’t a good sign. “No, I don’t!” he screamed in protest, and grabbed for his gun.

“I’m not gonna fight you,” Steve said, holding his shield in front of his torso. “But I’m not gonna let you override this kill switch either.”

In a fit of apparent fury, Bucky threw his gun aside and charged for the catwalk. Steve could feel the blood draining from his leg, feel the bullet grind against the bone. He wasn’t up for a fight, and Bucky knew it. 

“I’m with you to the end of the line,” Steve yelled at the top of his lungs, one last-ditch effort before they were stranded for good.

Bucky stopped.

The silence, even over the roar of the engines, was startling. Bucky was absolutely stock-still, frozen in place, his dark eyes locked on a point halfway between Steve’s face and Bucky’s own. 

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t say anything.

Someone began pounding on the bay doors, shouting for someone to open them, and Steve startled.

He moved.

Bucky sprinted for his gun, his boots slipping on the glass in his haste. Steve crouched, ignoring the flaring pain in his thigh, but Bucky wasn’t aiming for him. He shot his gun at the glass once, twice, three times, four, until his clip ran out. The glass had fractured, but not broken entirely. He used his metal arm to punch desperately at the floor. 

“No!” Steve screamed, realizing what he was trying to do. But too late.

_ Too late, too late, too late, too late for Tony, too late for Bucky, what are you good for, if you’re never on time for anything that matters? _

The glass gave way, and Bucky fell. 

They were still over land. The Florida Keys, maybe the Carribbean. 

The pounding on the doors hadn’t let up yet, but Steve could hear the hinges weakening. “Clint, evac?” he managed, though his comm was spritzing with static. 

“I’ve got evac, it’s—not d–de–d—enough time—sorry—”

“It’s okay, Clint,” Steve said, not sure exactly how much the archer could hear. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know it’s not my fault, it’s—goddammit, you dramatic—”

They were moving faster now, but Steve had to move, too. The bay doors offered one more protest before giving way to a phalanx of HYDRA agents bearing heavy arms. “Shit,” Steve hissed to himself, and dove off the catwalk. 

He tried to roll into a good landing, but his leg protested fiercely and then gave way. He ended up sprawled awkwardly along the glass bottom, practically a walking red-white-and-blue target, with a clear view of the ocean starting to become sprinkled with glaciers. 

The breath froze in Steve’s lungs, and he was seventy years in the past. 

_ I gotta put her in the water, he had said, and he had meant it. But he hadn’t known _ what _ it meant, what it really meant to put the nose of a plane into the ground and survive, feel the cold water seep into you and chill you to the bone. The ice freezes around you and you still try to move yourself out of it, but suddenly you can’t— _

The agents were screaming, but Steve didn’t think they would be screaming for the same reason that he was. He tried to turn to look, but all he heard was a metallic _ clunk _and shattering glass. 

The helicarrier lurched suddenly, and Steve’s balance shifted, rolling to the side. Belatedly, he remembered the hole that Bucky had punched through the bay doors.

It had to be ironic that they fell through the same one. 

He went weightless, his center of gravity rising out of his chest and up his throat, but he didn’t have the breath to scream. 

_ Tony, _he thought, and then he wasn’t falling anymore.

“You really decided to take a swan-dive when you realized I was here?” a teasing voice asked in his ear, and yes, he must be hallucinating, because—

“Yoo-hoo,” one metal arm detached from under his arms and waved in his face. “Jeez, Cap, I was dead for two days and you’ve already gotten over me? That’s cold, even for you—”

“Set us down,” Steve managed, and he was surprised he could speak without screaming. 

Tony hesitated for a moment, then offered a very small, “okay.”

The repulsors on the beat-up suit that Tony was wearing (why was it half-destroyed, what had Tony been doing) sputtered a few times as they landed on one of the helicarriers that didn’t seem to have anyone on it. 

“I cleared this one out before I found you,” Tony said quietly, as though he were reading Steve’s thoughts. 

“Take your helmet off,” Steve told him, his voice strained. 

The hydraulics hissed a complaint as Tony raised his arms, but he complied. There was blood running from a cut under his eye down to his chin, and there were a few other wounds and bruises covering his face that most certainly hadn’t been there before his house got blown up. 

“Steve,” Tony said, looking abashed and undeniably small, even in the Iron Man suit. “Steve, I’m—”

Steve reached out, seized Tony by the collar of the suit, and kissed him.

Even though he was the one who had initiated the kiss, Steve’s brain shut down. Tony was initially frozen against him, his lips tangy with licked-away blood, but he relaxed after a moment, his mouth molding to Steve’s. 

He pulled away and stared blankly at Steve. “What?”

“I’m so sorry,” Steve rushed, because he had completely misread the signs, and—

“No, it’s not…” Tony trailed off, frowning at something by Steve’s feet. “What the hell did you do to your leg?”

Steve had been doing his best to ignore the white-hot pain and the black creeping into the edges of his vision. But Tony’s words brought it all back to the surface, and he grunted as his leg buckled. 

“Whoa!” Tony lunged forward, the suit screeching as the joints grated, and caught Steve under the armpits. “Steve, hey, stay with me.”

“‘m glad you’re not dead,” Steve managed. Tony ripped off his gauntlets, and his hands were warm on Steve’s face. “Missed you.”

  
  
Tony laughed a little, but it didn’t sound happy—there were tear tracks tracing his face. Steve reached out a hand to wipe them away, but his fingers felt thick and clumsy and he totally missed. Tony caught the hand in his own and continued. “Steve, stay with me. Clint, I need evac now—”

The voices turned into a high-pitched ringing, then darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much guys!!! i LOVE hearing from you guys, so please leave comments down below on whatever you want! next chapter coming out ASAP!!!
> 
> EDIT: i'm trying to reply to all your comments, but ao3 is really not cooperating with me and my inbox is super glitched out. i'll try to respond ASAP! (it might have to be on my phone eek) thanks for the support!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No way,” Natasha laughed, leaning back into the couch in an unusually relaxed manner. Tony was pretty sure that the alcohol that was flowing like water probably had something to do with that. “He just kissed you and passed out?”
> 
> “Yes!” Tony insisted, and Steve groaned next to him. “He was like ‘take off your helmet’ and I swear to God, I thought he was going to punch me!”
> 
> “Why would I punch you?” Steve demanded, voice high with incredulity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are, exactly three months later......
> 
> I'm not even going to try and explain how long this took, so I'm just gonna post this and say that I have no idea when the next chapter is coming out. Hopefully sooner than this one took. Life has taken a TURN, let me say. 
> 
> BUT your comments are the ones that motivated me to get this done in my free time. I really did have fun writing this, especially because I'm departing from adapting canon to writing my own plot. 
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking around!! enjoy <333

“No way,” Natasha laughed, leaning back into the couch in an unusually relaxed manner. Tony was pretty sure that the alcohol that was flowing like water probably had something to do with that. “He just kissed you and passed out?”

“Yes!” Tony insisted, and Steve groaned next to him. “He was like ‘take off your helmet’ and I swear to God, I thought he was going to punch me!”

“Why would I punch you?” Steve demanded. 

“Because I faked my death and you didn’t get my voicemail so it seemed like I swooped in from beyond the grave to save you!”

“Cliché,” Clint commented from the other side of the table. Thor smacked him on the back of the head. 

“It’s cute,” he said, and everyone stared at him for a beat. “What?”

“Do you even know what that means, man?” Sam asked. 

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to learn how to speak a language properly,” Thor said, sounding mildly affronted. “The Allspeak isn’t universal, I can still adapt.”

Sam put his hands up in surrender, looking a little flustered at his apparent gaffe to an alien prince. 

Tony burst out laughing. “Thor, you scared the new guy.”

“Don’t let them get off-track,” Natasha warned, smirking. The alcohol had definitely gotten to her: she was loose-limbed and casual, draped across the furniture in a way that was unlike her. It made Tony happy, that she could be so free here with them.

Sam pointed at her like _ thank you. _ “So, are you guys an item now?”

Tony’s cheeks flamed, and Steve’s ears went fire-engine red. 

“Hey, they warned us,” Clint commented, spinning two chopsticks in between his fingers in varying patterns, for whatever reason. “How many times did Rogers tell you to not keep secrets?”

  
Frankly, Tony had forgotten about the future Captain America’s insistence on honesty. He wondered where that had come from. 

“Like, seven,” Steve said, and Sam frowned. 

“What now? 

“Oh, right, a new guy,” Tony remembered, even though he hadn’t really forgotten. “We had a little drop-in from mine and Capsicle’s future selves. They were together, too.”

Sam looked mildly disturbed by this revelation, and he bowed his head for a moment. “This is my life now,” he lamented, and they all laughed.

“Welcome to the life, wingman,” Natasha said, raising her glass in the air. 

Tony followed her example, and they all clinked their glasses together, chiming, “Wingman!”

“What is a wingman?” Thor asked blankly.

“Oh, buddy,” Tony said, patting him on the back. “You’ve still got a ways to go."

It was a few more minutes of comfortable small talk, asking Thor about what the hell he’d done in Greenwich that had destroyed half of the plaza, poking fun at Steve, teasing Sam. Tony leaned into Steve, letting his warmth seep into his core. Steve had draped an arm around him, and the laughter in the air (and in the wine) made Tony feel hopeful for the first time, really, since New York.

“So, we’re getting back together again?” Natasha asked in a lull of the conversation. “The Avengers, it’s happening?”

“I thought that was always the plan,” Steve admitted, shifting his broad shoulders so they brushed against Tony’s. He felt heat rise back into his cheeks and firmly pictured Senator Stern in his birthday suit to make the blush fade. 

“Me too,” he said, leaning into Steve. “I was just getting the Tower all fixed up. I mean, we were all in Malibu for a while before the HYDRA thing, and now, it’s obviously, well…” he spread his hands to showcase the obviously-repaired Tower. 

“I’m down,” Clint said. “I mean, I’m out of a job now, so…” There was a general murmur of assent all around the table. 

“Bruce is flying in tonight,” Tony announced. “I assumed you all would say yes. He was hanging out in Sri Lanka waiting to see what was gonna happen.”

“I won’t be able to stay,” Thor said mournfully. “Asgard was sacked in the war against Svartalfheim. I’ve really been gone too long, but…” he shrugged and said nothing more. There was obviously something else, something he wanted to say but couldn’t, but Tony wouldn’t push too soon.

“I’m going to hit the sack,” Clint said suddenly, slapping his drumsticks together. “Been a long day.”

“What have you done today?” Tony asked incredulously, but then Steve began to shift next to him as though to get up with him. “Not you too!”

Steve aimed puppy-dog eyes at him, and Tony rued the fact that he caved almost immediately. “Fine,” he groaned. “I’m getting old anyway. Old people go to bed early, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sam said, but he got up as well. “Steve?”

“Neither would I,” Steve said wryly, wrapping an arm around Tony’s shoulders. “But don’t be mean to my boyfriend.”

“Aww,” Tony cooed, leaning exaggeratedly into Steve. “I know there was a reason I liked you besides your d—”

“Nope!” Sam interrupted, shutting his eyes despite the lack of anything inappropriate happening in front of him. “I don’t want to hear it!”

“I was going to say dignity,” Tony said sagely. 

“I’m sure you were,” Natasha told him, rising smoothly. “Night, boys.”

Tony walked Steve all the way to the room that they shared. They didn’t really speak, but then again, they rarely had to: instead, they strolled in companionable silence, waiting for the sounds of Clint’s complaining to fade from earshot. They reached their apartment, but Tony stopped in the doorway. 

“I’ve got to wrap a few things up in my lab,” he said as Steve gave him a plaintive look. “I swear I won’t take more than a half hour. JARVIS can even make sure of it—JARVIS?”

“I am proven to be quite effective when it comes to forcing Mr. Stark to leave the lab,” JARVIS answered affably. “This includes occasionally activating sprinklers at the slightest sign of smoke, just to ensure his safety.”

Tony pointed at the ceiling. “See?”

Steve sighed, leaning against the doorframe. “All right. Have fun _ not _ blowing yourself up.”

“One time,” he said, planting a hand on Steve’s shoulder and nudging him into the room. If Steve truly didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t have budged, but he allowed himself to be pushed inside. “That was one time. I’ll see you soon.”

“Counting on it,” Steve said.

Tony managed to restrain himself from addressing JARVIS again until he was in the safety of his lab. Then, of course, as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning, he burst out, “Well?”

“Well what, sir?”

“Don’t be obtuse on purpose, it’s… annoying,” Tony told the ceiling, spinning himself in an idle circle in his chair. “The simulations. Any luck? It’s been weeks now, aren’t they finishing up soon?”

“They were delayed after the… electrical incident with the generators and Mr. Odinson,” JARVIS reported, an ounce of hesitation in his voice to presumably emphasize the absurdity of that fiasco. “They will be finishing tomorrow.”

“And?”

“So far, none have been successful.” Tony cursed viciously, letting the foul language spill out his throat and curdle as they left his lips. The time was running out, he _ knew _ it. “However, I am operating on limited scans of the Mind Stone, as we only had it on premises for roughly a week and our attentions were focused elsewhere at the time."

Tony stopped spinning. “So you’re saying having it here would help?”

“It certainly would not hinder.”

“Huh.” Tony scooched himself over to the nearest monitor and tapped it awake. “Where’d Fury stick that thing, anyway? He put that tracker on it because of the whole HYDRA thing, can you access that?”

“Certainly,” JARVIS said, and free of prompting, the computer Tony was using pulled up a satellite map. “Scanning.”

Tony sighed to himself as he waited, and looked to the far wall. 

_ Stardust and cold metal, ancient moons and bright gold and an old, purple-gray face grinning with mossy teeth, _ I know you, Stark, _ and Death smothering the universe in her embrace. _

Where had Tony seen that? It was a dream—a nightmare—but there was something to it, a tinge of red and green and gold—

“Sir, I’m afraid that I cannot locate Loki’s Scepter.”

Tony shot up in his seat, feeling the familiar symptoms of an attack bubble up in his chest. _ Drat. _ He hadn’t had one for months, but now—

“_ What?” _ he demanded. “The _ entire point _ of giving that thing to SHIELD was that Fury was going to keep an eye on it. What’s the last ping you’ve got on it?”

“The Triskelion, sir,” JARVIS said, unusually contrite for an AI that Tony had created. “It’s unclear how long it has been offline.”

Tony upset his chair so badly that it tipped onto the floor with a bang that startled him further. “You—what? _ Unclear?” _

“My processing power has been occupied as of recently,” JARVIS said, a bit peevish, “with your project, and with keeping Stark Industries running."

  
Tony ran shaking fingers through his hair. “You’re right, J, I’m sorry, I—fuck.”

“I will call Captain Rogers—” JARVIS began, but Tony waved him off. 

“Don’t,” he ordered, clenching his fingers together to quell their trembling. “I’m going up there anyway. I’m gonna sleep on this. Just—keep looking.”

“Of course, sir.”

Tony took another look at the bright lights, DUM-E and U spinning idly at the far side of the room, the rapid-fire computer screens, and thought _ I made this, but he runs it. _ “Thanks, buddy.”

* * *

“So, we’ve got a problem,” Tony said the next morning, plopping down on the couch. “Anyone wanna guess?”

“Illegitimate child,” said Clint.

“More aliens,” said Sam.

“You bought more of Disney,” said Bruce, who had arrived sometime during the night and was already bullying Tony. 

“I agree with Bruce,” said Steve, who was apparently joining in.

“Hey—!” Tony began, then turned to blink at Steve. “I told you already!”

“Before we devolve into more arguments,” Thor interrupted, “maybe tell us what the problem is?"

“Uh,” Tony said. “Sure. Um. The Sceper’s missing.”

The hustle and bustle of the kitchen went still. Bruce turned off the stove and turned fully around, and Thor leaned forward on his stool. “How is that possible?"

“The tracker that Fury put on it got deactivated, probably somewhere between my death and Fury’s. I think a rogue HYDRA cell stole it during the fall.” Tony sighed. “It’s not ideal.”  
  


“Great,” Natasha said dryly. The rest of them shifted uncomfortably, and Tony was reminded of whispers of _ everything special about you came out of a bottle, always a way out, isn’t there? _ “Well, we have access to a list of all the hidden bases as long as they weren’t locked out of SHIELD databases.”

“We’re the only one who have them, right?” Sam checked, reaching for some type of quiche that JARVIS had ordered for them. “The files. HYDRA doesn’t have them?”

“Nah,” Natasha said easily, leaning back further into her seat. “I wiped them from all of SHIELD’s computers and stole the hard drive.”

“And got electrocuted,” Clint put in helpfully.

“And got electrocuted,” Natasha allowed. 

“JARVIS can search them,” Tony said, snapping his fingers at the ceiling. “Right, bud? A lot faster than Clint’s cute little eyes.”

Clint pouted, and Steve poked Tony in the side. “Don’t be mean,” he chided. 

“His codename is literally Hawkeye!” Tony defended indignantly. “He brought it upon himself!”

“I can certainly convince my father that I have a reason to stay here if Loki’s scepter is in the wind,” Thor reasoned with a mischievous spark in his eye. 

“Yeah, can’t have that on the loose,” Natasha said, sipping daintily at her orange juice.

“Sir,” JARVIS said suddenly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve compiled a list of likely locations for the Scepter have been moved to. I’ve also discovered evidence of tampering with the tracker as long ago as three weeks after the invasion.”

The atmosphere sobered even further. “_What?” _ Tony asked, swiping a hologram over to himself. “How did we not notice?”

“Already?” Tony heard Steve mutter, but Tony ignored him. 

“They were very subtle, sir,” JARVIS said. “And I’ve recently been preoccupied with other matters.”

Sam stared at the ceiling, alarmed. “The hell is that?" 

“AI,” Natasha said, then pointedly looked at Tony. “Although I didn’t realize that he did… all that.”

Tony shrugged at her, not apologetic in the least. “Sorry if I downplayed the importance of my AI that could end the world if someone got a hold of it.”

Sam shook his head incredulously. Thor only laughed. 

“There are twelve HYDRA cells stationed all across South America, Eastern Europe, and northern Russia that have the potential to host the Scepter,” JARVIS recounted. “I would recommend that you move immediately to prevent HYDRA from moving the weapon to another location.”  
  


Tony groaned, but Steve sat forwards. Tony quietly mourned the removal of the warmth against his side, but Steve didn’t seem to notice. “What could HYDRA do with the Scepter?” Steve asked worriedly. “It already has mind controlling powers, could it… do something else?”  
  


“It already had a hand in bringing Stark and Rogers to our timeline,” Thor said gravely. “It’s an Infinity Stone: both it and the Tesseract are capable of destroying this half of the galaxy with no trouble.”

“Great,” Clint said dryly. “When do we leave?”

* * *

In a rarely intimate moment, Tony curled up on the couch with his head in Steve’s lap. Everyone else had left to pack and rest before their mission, but Tony couldn’t bring himself to move. He ran his fingers lightly along Steve’s thigh where the bullet wound had been. “How’s your leg?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” Steve told him exasperatedly. “It healed two weeks ago. How’s your back? Still bruised?”

Low blow. It wasn’t Tony’s fault that he didn’t have an enhanced body that healed shit in like three hours. He told Steve as much, and he huffed with laughter. “Sorry.”

“What do you think about all this?” Tony said into Steve’s stomach. “The Scepter, and HYDRA, and, you know, Bucky.”

Tony’s head moved a little when Steve exhaled. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We do have to get the Scepter back, because they were so specific about it. And the thing with Barnes, my parents…”

Tony had been angry at first. He had stormed out of the room when Steve told him, gone down to the lab, and blown up half of the prototypes that he had on his workbench. He still wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about it: it was less of a conscious feeling than a mixture of resentment, grief, anger, but also pity and empathy. 

But one thing that Tony had always been good at was analyzing facts, often at the expense of his emotional state. It was one of the reasons he was so good at building things and so bad at dealing with them. 

Fact one: the Winter Soldier had murdered his parents in cold blood. Strangled his mother, bashed Howard’s head against the steering wheel. 

Fact two: the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes, Steve’s best friend from World War II. 

These two facts together should have immediately led to Tony irrevocably blaming Barnes for his parents’ death. But then there was fact three: Bucky Barnes had been tortured for over seventy years and brainwashed into becoming a living weapon. 

Fact four: HYDRA had done this to him. 

Conclusion: HYDRA had killed his parents, not Bucky Barnes. 

“It wasn’t his fault,” Tony told Steve, realizing that he’d zoned out. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. And a lot of therapeutic destruction. It was HYDRA.”

“Tony…”

Tony sat up, looking Steve square in the eyes. “Steve,” he said firmly, taking both of his hands. “Believe me when I say this: I understand how important he is to you. And I understand that HYDRA tortured him until he forgot himself. So I want to help. Both for his sake, and mine, and to tell HYDRA to go fuck itself.”

Steve laughed, but there were tears in his eyes. 

“I care about you,” Tony continued. “I really, really do. And you care about him, so I do, too.”

“Thank you,” Steve managed, and ducked in to hug him so hard his ribs creaked. 

* * *

They left early in the morning, despite Tony’s protesting back. South America was their starting point: first in Bolivia, then northern Venezuela. Zip. Nada. The only thing that Tony found was a slight malfunction in his wrist repulsors when he tried to fry mosquitos out of the air. 

“There’s gotta be a way to track it,” Bruce was spewing, twisting the sleeves of his sweater between his fingers, an anxious tick. It was late and Tony was bone-tired, but they were still awake because today had been an abysmal failure. “I mean, the Infinity Stones emit _ massive _amounts of energy, and we have the readings from the Mind Stone from when the Couple came. Why can’t we find it?”

The Avengers had taken to calling Stark and Rogers “the Couple.” Everyone thought it was funny but Tony and Steve. 

Thor, who for some reason had decided to hang out in the lab with them, set a steady hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “They’re immensely powerful,” he rumbled in that impossibly deep voice of his. “But you humans, I’ve found, are quite clever when it comes to disguising these things. We’ll find it.”

Bruce didn’t look convinced, but he had released the cuffs of his sweater from their stranglehold. Most of his nervous energy seemed to have drained right out of him through Thor’s contact. 

“Thor’s right,” Tony said when he realized he hadn’t actually said anything in a few minutes. “We ticked off two bases already. By the time HYDRA realizes what’s going on, it’ll be too late.”

“I hope so,” Bruce muttered, mostly to himself. “I’m gonna get some rest. Thor, Tony?”

The god dipped his head in acquiescence, but Tony waved the offer away. “I’ll clean up and head up in a few minutes. Night.”

Their strongest Avengers both mumbled goodnights and shuffled out. Tony smiled fondly to himself. 

“Sir,” JARVIS said quietly, startling Tony despite the AI’s best efforts. “I finished the simulations you requested.”

Tony set down the tool he’d been fiddling with. “And?” 

“Every scenario was catastrophic,” JARVIS said regrettably. “I’m sorry, sir. Ultron is a failure.”

Tony breathed deep and looked to the drawing hung on the far wall. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “We’ll just have to try something else then, won’t we?”

“Yes, sir. _ We _ will.”

* * *

The next morning, they left equally as early. There were half a dozen HYDRA bases in Eastern Europe to hit, plus two in Western, so they packed their belongings for the week and went to stay in Tony’s off-book home in rural France. 

“The vineyards?” Natasha asked dryly. “Please tell me—”

“I bought this in my _ I’m-dying _ crisis, leave me alone!”

Italy: bust. Switzerland: bust, but they _ did _ buy some nice chocolate. Croatia: bust. Turkey: bust. Bust, bust—

“Sokovia?” Clint said dubiously, studying the map. “I dunno, Cap, seems like a long shot. Why would they drag the Scepter all the way out there? It’s out of range of basically every industrialized country, why—”

Natasha spat out a curse. “That’s the _ point,” _ she said, like the words cut her throat as they came out. “Let’s go.”

Tony primed the jet with a push of a button on his phone, and called the suit with another. It took the team ten minutes to change into their combat outfits, so he and Bruce sat by the plane playing twenty questions.

By the time Steve distracted him,Tony had determined that Bruce was thinking of a diatomic element with an atomic number higher than eight, which left fluorine, iodine—

Steve kissed him on the top of the head and Tony lost all his trains of thoughts. And those were a _ lot _ of trains. 

“Steve,” Tony whined. “I was gonna win!”

Bruce laughed, patted him on the shoulder, and blushed when Thor boomed, “another victory, Bruce!”

Oh, boy. 

“Ride’ll be a half hour, folks,” Clint announced from the cockpit. “Hop to it!”

“He sounds like a Disney mascot,” Tony complained. “One of those stupid rides at Disney World.”

“You own an entire Kingdom in Disney World,” Natasha informed him. “Shut up.”

Since he was a responsible adult who owned a significant portion of Disney World, Tony stuck out his tongue and blew her a raspberry. 

“All right, settle down,” Steve called in his Captain voice. “We’re gonna go over an entry plan. We’ve got the element of surprise. Let’s use it.

“Tony and I will enter from the north,” Steve continued, manipulating the map to demonstrate where. Tony felt a pang of pride at his lover, freshly thrown into a new century and adapting easily: a fish to water. He smiled to himself, but Thor caught it and winked. “Thor, you’ll take Nat down to the south and wait for my signal. Clint, stay in the jet with Bruce until we can determine whether or not we have a code green. If we do, hop out and cover him. If not, aerial support. Any questions?”

No one spoke up. Bruce’s hands were tangled in the hem of his shirt again. 

“And keep an eye out for Barnes info, people!” Tony called, rubbing his hands together. “Sam can’t do it all.”

Sam, much to his chagrin, had been left behind in New York for this mission. The Falcon wings had been damaged in their last fight, and Tony hadn’t had a chance to repair them to the point where he was sure they wouldn’t explode upon use. Instead, he was working with JARVIS to scour paper and digital documents for signs of Bucky. 

Natasha slung a two-finger salute his way and ducked into the cockpit. Steve took Tony’s hand and squeezed it. “Are you okay with that?”

“What?” Tony asked, and briefly wondered if he’d accidentally tuned out half of the conversation again. 

“Bucky,” Steve clarified. “I know… I know your mom’s death was hard on you—_ is _hard on you. If you don’t want to get involved…”

“Steve,” Tony said gently. “I will give you the same answer as all the other times you’ve said this. It _ wasn’t his fault. _ Heat of the moment, yeah, I’ll give it to you, I probably wouldn’t have had the best reaction. But being tortured for _ decades… _ I want to kill the HYDRA bastards who ordered it. But not him.”

“Okay,” Steve breathed, and he rested his forehead on Tony’s. “Okay.”

And this—Tony _ loved _ this. They had their awkward, bumbling moments, or their arguments, but it was all worth it. Steve was just…

“Landing in two minutes!” Clint called over the intercom. “You assholes ready to avenge?”

“Avenge what, dickhead?” Tony yelled back, and Bruce burst out laughing. If it was slightly hysterical, no one called him out on it. They were all a little insane, anyway.

Steve mounted his motorbike, and Tony stepped into the armor. “Catch you on the other side,” Steve told him, and Tony gasped. 

“Pop culture!” he yelled. “It’s been butchered!”

The bay doors opened and dropped him right into the fray before Tony could catch Steve’s reaction, and soon, he was much more preoccupied with the agents pointing guns at his face. 

There was a code green, because of course there was. Tony’s heart ached for Bruce, the man who had only wanted to do good and thought that _ this _ was his version of good, but nonetheless, the Hulk was a huge help. He ripped antiaircraft missiles from the sky before they hit Thor and Tony, destroyed entire phalanxes before they reached Clint and Natasha, and picked up tanks and threw them at Steve’s pursuers like toys. 

Tony fired a missile at the looming building, and it rebounded off the force field like a rubber ball. “Shit!” he spat. 

“Language,” Steve chided absently, and Tony laughed at the absurdity of it all. 

Tony managed to break through the force field a few minutes later: it was powerful, but inefficient, so it was child’s play to send a missile through the weak point into the power source. 

The guards inside tried to shoot him, which—seriously, did they have no other ideas? He took them out with strategically-placed drones, moved into the next room, blasted some guy typing frantically at one of the monitors, and stepped out of the suit. 

“I’m in,” he said to the empty air. “No sign of Strucker.”

“Be careful, Tony,” Steve said, grunting as he presumably hurled his shield at something. “Who knows what they’ve been doing with the Mind Stone.”

“Roger that,” Tony said just before Natasha cried out, “Clint!”

Tony’s heart clenched, but he had to focus on the mission at hand. He thought of the drawing, torn paper and blacked-out faces, and took a deep breath. 

“We have an enhanced in the field,” Steve said faintly over the comm line that Tony had turned down. Tony ignored this—he had to, before he lost it entirely. 

“JARVIS, recover the files Mr. Crazy was trying to delete,” Tony said, gesturing at the computers. “And gimme a scan of the room.”

“The wall to your left,” JARVIS said after a moment, the suit bent over the flashing monitors. “I’m reading steel reinforcement, and an air current.”

“Please be a secret door, please be a secret door,” Tony pleaded to himself, approaching the wall with both hands outstretched. When he pushed it, it gave way with a grinding complaint. “Yay!”

“Guys, I got Strucker,” Steve called. “No sign of the speedster. Tony, be careful down there.”

“Yeah,” Tony said absently, because he was already absorbed in the scene in front of him. “Yeah, I got… something bigger.”

The Chitauri leviathan leered down at him, all wicked teeth and gleaming metal, and Tony thought of distant burned-out stars, gleaming fortresses and the face of death looming, smiling, over New York. Tony took a stuttering breath, half-expecting it to lurch toward him and swallow him whole. 

There was a shuffle of steps behind him just as Tony caught sight of the Scepter. He went to turn, stretched out a hand for the suit, but too late. 

Blinding pain in his head erupted, turned his vision white, and Tony crumpled around the sound of Steve’s shout of “_Tony!” _

* * *

When Tony screamed, Steve nearly dropped his shield and tripped over a dead body in the main chamber. “_Tony!” _ he called frantically, hoping (praying) for a response. He didn’t get one. 

“Shit,” he hissed again. “Anyone else unoccupied? Natasha?”

“I’m on lullaby,” she said, worry leaking into her tone. “I can make it there in five.”

“Barton is stable on the jet,” Thor reported. “I can make my way back over.”

“Okay,” Steve breathed, “Okay. Natasha, stay on lullaby. Thor, you do that, meet me…” Steve trailed off, realizing that he had _ no idea _ where Tony was. “JARVIS?”

“Mr. Stark discovered a secret door leading down to a lower level of this fortress,” JARVIS reported immediately. “He made his way down, but the Iron Man suit is still on the upper level, except for the left arm. I cannot pinpoint what hostiles may be down there—”

The blue blur of the speedster rushed by Steve, knocking him into the far wall. Steve watched where his trail disappeared, picked up his shield, and followed resolutely after. 

He found the Iron Man suit in pieces, sparks flying everywhere from its torn joints, and an obvious gap in the wall. “Thor,” he said softly, pressing his body to the wall and peeking around the corner. “What’s your status?”

“I’m here,” Thor said from behind Steve, startling him enough that he jerked away from the entrance. “What’s…” he caught sight of the mangled Iron Man suit, and his gaze hardened. “Who needs to meet Mjolnir?” 

“Two minutes,” Natasha reported. “I’ll meet you there.”

Thor’s steps down the stone staircase were surprisingly soft for a man of his bulk, let alone of his station. There was electricity licking the hammer and crawling up to his wrist, but it also collected along his shoulders and neck. Steve wondered absently how much of the conducting Mjolnir actually did. 

There were voices coming from the antechamber below, one male and one female, with Slavic lilts to both their voices. Steve assumed that the male was the speedster from earlier, but he hadn’t encountered any other female fighters. 

Steve made out the word _ Stark _ and his vision went red. 

“Go for the speedster first,” Steve hissed to Thor. “If you can catch him off-guard and fry him, we can deal with the woman.”

Thor nodded his acknowledgement, and static began condensing the air. 

They reached the entryway, pressing themselves to either side. “Coming in hot,” Natasha hissed over the line. “Thirty seconds.”

Steve held up three fingers, then two, then one. Thor whipped around the corner first, thrusting his white-hot hammer in front of him. The speedster was not quick enough to dodge. 

The Scepter was resting on a lab table behind them. Steve felt a pang of satisfaction—_ finally. _

The woman, with brown stringy hair hanging in front of her eyes and filthy bandages wrapped around her wrists, cried out, “Pietro!” She made an abortive movement to kneel beside him, but whipped around to face him and Thor, her eyes wide with horror and feral anger. 

“You can come peacefully,” Steve began, but those furious eyes began to glow red. 

“You’ll pay,” she spat, and shot a hand toward Thor. A stream of red, glowing energy collided with Thor’s head in the same moment that Natasha came from the shadows and jammed the girl in the neck with her Widow’s Bites. 

Thor collapsed to his knees in tandem with the witch, and his eyes glowed red too. 

“Thor,” Natasha called, but Steve caught sight of the legs of Tony’s flightsuit behind a table. 

“I have two hostiles contained, Thor is down, Stark unclear,” Natasha was saying rapid-fire into her comm. Bruce sounded an acknowledgement on the other line. 

Steve practically flung his shield aside when he found Tony, crumpled on his side with an Iron Man gauntlet around his left hand. His nose was bleeding, and he had a cut along his cheekbone, but that was the only sign of injury. 

But Natasha was still shaking a half-catatonic Thor, who was muttering to himself and clutching his hands to his chest. If the witch had done that to an alien god, then…

“Tony,” Steve said, reaching out to jostle him. “Tony, wake up.”

For one horrifying moment, nothing happened. Then, Steve’s boyfriend began to rouse, groaning and raising a hand to his head. “Ow,” he muttered, his voice slightly slurred. “Did Thor hit me with his hammer?”

“No,” Steve said softly, feeling a tinge of amusement as he glimpsed Thor begin to rouse as well. “You both got whammied.”

Tony suddenly went bolt upright. “The Scepter, it’s—”

“It’s there,” Steve reassured him. “It’s okay.”

Tony looked up, and for the first time Steve _ really _ took in the Chitauri leviathan hanging above their heads. Its beady eyes had apparently remained intact despite the Hulk’s best efforts, and it lorded over them like it knew something they didn’t. 

Behind them, Thor shoved Natasha off him and cried out, “No!” His eyes were glowing blue, plasma wrapping up his arms like demented chains, and for a terrifying moment Steve thought he would explode. 

Mjolnir was resting on the ground beside him, forgotten. 

“Thor, calm down,” Natasha was saying, showing her empty hands. “Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t.”

“The Stones,” Thor gasped out, and Tony went absolutely still under Steve’s hands. “He’s—they’re—collecting them.”

“The end of half the universe,” Tony said eerily. “Like they warned us about.”

Thor gazed at both of them miserably, and the lightning went out. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I’m sorry.”

Natasha frowned down at her hands, then looked over at the girl, crumpled next to the boy—Pietro. “How do you know it was real?”

“It was real,” Thor said, totally certain. “I’m not certain that it would have been real for you, but the fragment of the Stone inside her reacted… poorly with my energy.”

Steve looked over at the girl, studied her delicate features. And at the same time, he and Tony said, “I recognize her.”

They looked at each other, and Natasha and Thor looked at them. 

“The drawing,” Tony said. “She’s in it.”

“Oh, boy,” said Natasha, flatly, and she offered Thor a hand to his feet. “Let’s deal with this on the jet, shall we?”

They stumbled out of the fortress looking like a half-crazed, _ extremely _ suspicious entourage. Steve walked with the girl slung limp over his shoulder and Tony’s hand clasped in his free one. Thor, despite not looking at all up for carrying anything lighter than a feather, picked up the boy like it was nothing. Although, come to think of it, he probably weighed less than a feather to Thor. The demigod, too, had his free hand wrapped in Natasha’s free one, but Steve was sure that in this case, it was platonic. Natasha was probably trying to steady Thor in the only way she knew how; Thor seeking comfort in a friend after… whatever he had seen. 

“I see you guys,” Bruce said unsteadily on the jet. “Clint’s fine, are you guys okay?”

“Getting there,” Steve said, because Tony’s face was still pale and waxy, his hand trembling in Steve’s, and Thor’s shoulders had curved in in an effort to make himself smaller. 

“We’ve got two prisoners here,” Natasha said breezily. “Enhanced. Prep the cuffs, please? I’m pretty sure they’ll stay out the whole trip, but just in case.”

Steve was pretty sure at least of half of Natasha’s decisions were based on _ just in case. _In this line of work, it wasn’t exactly a bad thing. 

“Sure,” Bruce said. “One minute.”

They boarded the jet, and Thor again proved how thrown off he was when he nearly bashed the boy’s head into the frame of the Quinjet. He would have, actually, if it weren’t for Tony’s quick reflexes. 

“Easy, Thor,” he said quietly. “I know.”

Natasha ducked into the cockpit after muttering a few words into Clint’s ear. Steve startled, setting the girl down next to the other enhanced. “Did you see something too?”

Tony shook his head no. “It was just… pain. But I know what it’s like to worry about Thanos.”

“We don’t know it’s him,” Steve said, admittedly pathetic. 

“We do,” Thor said, speaking for the first time in a long while. “I saw it. I have to…”

“Nobody is doing anything yet,” Bruce interrupted, ducking out from a storage container to give them a stern glance. He also looked terrible: pale and sweaty, practically buried in that sweater of his. But he was putting on a strong face for the rest of them, which Steve could firmly appreciate. “Right now, we’re gonna get Clint back to base, and _ then _ we’ll deal with these two.” He waved the cuffs in the air. 

Tony snorted out a laugh. “Yes, sir,” he said, and saluted, turned to Steve. “Steve, I think he’s trying to replace you.”

“He’s welcome to,” Steve said, and he too laughed at Bruce’s horrified expression. 

* * *

True to Natasha’s word, the two young adults stayed passed out until well after they arrived to base. Sam gave Steve a dubious look after Helen Cho’s crew wheeled Clint off the jet, speaking in rapid-fire Korean and accompanied by Natasha. He and Thor dragged them off again, put them in the holding cells that had been previously used for Loki. 

“I knew these would come in handy,” Tony said wryly, rapping his knuckles against the glass. “I turned the heat up, though.”

“Small mercies,” said Steve dryly, and turned away. “What happened back there?”

Tony’s happy expression dropped suddenly, like Steve had told him his new puppy died. He sighed, leaning against the cell wall. “She was trying to show me something,” he said, rare uncertainty leaking into his tone. “I think. There were—flashes. Space. The Chitauri. But it was mostly just pain. I think… I think they’re new to this whole thing. I mean, did you see the way the speedster was running?”

“Yes,” Steve said, “but you didn’t.”

Tony waved that away, confidence already restored. “Educated guess. I mean, Thor said he saw _ something, _ which means that she was probably trying to do that to me. They look half-starved, too—this can't have been going on long.”

“Why?”

“They’d be dead!” Tony exclaimed, jabbing a thumb behind him at the glass. “Do you know how many calories they must burn, especially the boy?”

“More than me?” Steve guessed, secretly reveling in Tony’s genius. 

“More than you!” Tony agreed. “So why did this even happen to them? How did they use the Scepter to do—”

Steve glimpsed movement, and then there was a huge _ BANG _ on the glass behind Tony. The inventor startled so badly he stumbled into Steve’s chest. 

The girl was awake, her eyes positively glowing with fury. Her eyes were fixed on Tony. She curled her hands together and flung another magical blast at the glass. Nothing happened. 

“She can’t get through that,” Tony said shakily, not untangling himself from Steve. “Even Loki couldn’t. Still, though… JARVIS?”

“I will keep you updated, sir,” the AI agreed smoothly. “I am glad you are safe, sir.”

“Me too, buddy,” Tony said, looking back at the half-feral girl hurling energy at the cell wall as Steve led him from the room. “Me, too.”

* * *

Thor was certain something was coming. 

They had already had this confirmed by their future selves: Stark and Rogers, quietly describing the destruction of half the known universe. And Thor himself, brutally injured, almost unrecognizable, telling him Loki was dead and to ask his father about a woman named Hela. Thor had not had a chance to get an answer from Odin: when he asked before the siege by Svartalfheim, the king had gone deathly pale and promptly fallen into the Odinsleep. 

Days later, after his mother’s and Loki’s deaths, Thor asked again. Odin looked at him blankly, like he had no idea what Thor was talking about, and suggested he take some time off. 

Thor knew something was wrong. _ Something _ was coming. He just had to figure out what. 

“_Wake up!”_ _Heimdall shouted, his fingers digging deep into Thor’s shoulders. “You killed us—he’s coming!”_

_ The six Stones flew by Thor’s eyes: Space, enclosed in the Tesseract; Mind, trapped in the Scepter; Power, in a silvery orb, grabbed up by an orange bird—no, a ship; Reality, trapped in the In Between for so long and now enclosed in glass, a new prison; Time, a blinking eye, gold and ancient, clutched in trembling hands, _ human _ hands; Soul, two arching pillars and a cliff, a cliff that sparked such dread that Thor backed away from it, stumbling over his own feet— _

_ Thor’s hands sparked, and his lightning stretched out to reach a man on the far side of the room. He screamed as he disintegrated. _

_ So imagine Thor’s horror when his hands sparked again and Natasha was right there, _right there—

“Thor!” 

Thor looked up abruptly from where he was sat in a chair near Clint’s bed. It was Steve who had spoken, but the entire team was staring at him, even Clint, who had a gash torn into his side and who should definitely be the center of attention right then, not Thor. 

“Sorry,” Thor muttered. His hands began to light up again, and he clenched his fists to force the charge to dissipate. 

“Are you okay?” Tony asked, and Thor was glad it was him and no one else, because he was the only other one who had felt her claws tear into his skull. “I know she’s kind of brutal, and—”

“It’s starting,” Thor interrupted. “The Stones. It’s starting.”

Natasha bowed her head. Her hair was the longest Thor had ever seen it: it reached past her shoulders and brushed her rib cage, but he got the feeling that she’d soon be changing it. She never seemed to stay the same, and it reminded him of Loki.

_ I’m sorry— _

“How can you know?” Bruce asked, wringing his hands together. “I mean, the Couple said that this didn’t start happening until 2015, and Thanos arrived in 2018, how—”

“We’ve been discovering the Stones faster than they ever did,” Tony interrupted. “Reality, Space, and Mind… it’s 2013, but Stark told me they didn’t find the Scepter until 2015. That’s probably why our Wonder Twins are so inexperienced, they didn’t have time to train.”

“That’s a problem,” Clint dragged out. 

“Power,” Thor muttered. “Soul, Time.”

They all turned to stare at him once more. “Come again?” said Tony. 

“The rest of the Stones,” Thor said, feeling like something was sitting on his tongue, twisting it, coating his throat in broken glass and ice. “The Orb. The Eye. The cliffs…”

Now they were looking at him like the Allspeak wasn’t functioning. 

“Man, you’re such an alien,” Tony said finally. 

“Tony,” Steve chided. 

“What?”

“I have to go,” Thor found himself saying, standing on unsteady legs. He was still wearing his combat armor, but that was fine for Asgard. It wasn’t like anyone there would care: his mother might have, once upon a time, but those times were long gone, _ she _ was long gone. “The Stones aren’t safe here, Time is already here, we can’t risk him noticing—”

“Time is _ here?” _ Natasha snapped, standing abruptly from her chair. Thor stopped. Blinked. 

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Natasha said. “You said Time was here.”

Thor stared at her, then looked around at the rest of them. “What did I say?” he said weakly, and then the ground beneath them began to tremble. 

“There are no earthquakes in New York,” Tony said, like this was a normal occurrence. 

“No,” Steve agreed placidly. 

The ground shook even more, and Thor faintly heard a scream of rage echo from the basement. 

“We’re talking about this later,” Natasha said to Thor, perfectly calm.

The lights went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading!
> 
> you may have noticed the chapter count went up. don't expect that to be the last time that happens, to be honest. 5 chapters was always a placeholder until I could figure out how long this monster is going to be.
> 
> kudos, comments, etc. make my day!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do I deserve?” Tony burst out, because the girl was in the illustration and this boy was not and he had to know what made him different. “Why do all this?”
> 
> “We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us.” Neither of them seemed fazed by the non-sequitur that he had just spoken. There was an entranced quality to his voice, as though he’d been returned to the moment that this had happened. “When the first shell hits two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It’s big,” he continued, gesturing with his hands. Wanda had turned her face away, hiding in the shadows of the ruined cell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello..
> 
> yeah, I am aware that it is July and it's been almost 6 months since I last updated. my sincere apologies. my mental health took a downturn in quarantine and i lost my ability to write for the entire months of april and most of may. despite that, i am sorry that it took so long for this chapter to come out. thank you SO MUCH to EVERYONE who left comments during this time, because you all are so kind and supportive and they almost made me cry. <3
> 
> without further ado.... here it is!! :) [with a surprise character at the end!]

The backup arc reactor kicked in almost immediately—Tony was surprised that it had gone offline at all, stress or not—and bathed the room in dim blue light. It only accentuated the pained lines of Clint’s face, the dark bruises under Bruce’s eyes, the eerie expression that Thor had adopted. 

“Basement,” Steve said sternly. “Now.”

“You’re just gonna leave me hanging?” Clint called as they rushed out of the room. “Okay, bye!”

The lights in the hallway were equally dim, and Tony regretted putting in such ominous emergency illumination for a moment. JARVIS had already called the elevator, and the building trembled again. 

“There is no sign of negative im–im–impact on surrounding buildings,” JARVIS reported, his voice jamming for a moment. “It appears that Wanda Maximoff is only determined to destabilize the Tower.”

“Wanda Maximoff?” Steve repeated, sounding the name out. 

“And her twin brother, Pietro.”

“Oh, joy,” Tony muttered. 

The elevator moved unusually fast: much faster than was legal, Tony was sure, but things like building codes had never fazed neither him nor JARVIS. The five people crammed in the elevator were unusual, too, and they could all endure a little bit of whiplash.

Natasha had backed into the corner, all hard lines and sharp edges. Tony couldn’t blame her: after all, her partner was upstairs, wounded, unable to watch her back. Thor was still white as a sheet, clutching the railing like it was the only thing keeping him upright. 

“What’s the plan, Steve?” Bruce asked quietly. He was still wearing the ratty sweater from the mission, and there was still blood crusted in Natasha’s hairline. None of them were ready for a fight. 

“We’ll see if we can talk them down,” Steve said. He had the shield strapped to his arm, but sometime in the past half-hour he must have had time to change out of his filthy uniform because he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans instead of the stars and stripes. “There’s got to be some reason that they’re acting this way—JARVIS, you said you knew who they were?”

“Sokovian nationals,” JARVIS reported. “They volunteered for Strucker’s experiments after their house was destroyed by local insurgents. Their parents were killed in the explosion.”

“Jesus,” Tony muttered. “That’s fucked up.”

“Sir, there’s—”

The elevator doors began to rumble open, but a blast of glowing red energy ripped them apart, warping the metal beyond repair, and Steve shoved Tony into the side of the elevator to prevent him from being decapitated by it. 

_ Impossible, _ Tony wanted to shout. There was no way either of them could have broken the cage that had once held Loki. How could this little witchling have done it?

Thor frowned, shook off the arm that Natasha was using to keep him against the wall, and stepped into the open, raising his hands as he did so. “We mean you no harm,” he rumbled. “We merely wish to understand you.”

“You understand nothing,” a voice hissed, thickened by an Eastern European accent and guttural with hatred, and more energy washed over Thor’s chest. He was thrown back a step, and sparks began to curl in the air. 

“Help me to,” Thor said. “You made me see things, _ mala,” _ and here his voice changed, warped, and the air wavered around him for a moment. A headache began to throb at Tony’s temples as he realized that _ this _ was the Allspeak in action. “things that I have not seen before. The future.”

A beat. “I have no concern about your future.”

The lights were bending now, pulled to near darkness and then full brightness with the strength of Thor’s influence. “What are you concerned with?”

A red glow began to fight the blue emergency lights, warring purple on Thor’s face. “_Stark’s death," _ Wanda Maximoff hissed, and red tendrils encircled all of them and yanked them out into the open. 

Tony was right. They had not been able to break through their enclosure, but he hadn’t anticipated that she could stretch her magic right through the glass. Her efforts were clearly taking a toll on her, though. Her brother was half-supporting her as they crouched in the corner, glaring at them through eyes hidden by white-stained hair. The edges of her hairline were sticky with sweat, her eyeliner running to create smudges under her eyes. But both of her hands were outstretched, curling around scarlet mist that pressed Tony firmly against the wall. 

  
She moved elegantly, her fingers twining together to manipulate the flow of energy around her. She eyed Tony like a lion, a huntress, and for a moment, Tony felt like a tiny mouse.

“_Tony!” _ Steve yelled, but he was similarly pinned as Maximoff curled a finger and dragged Tony to the center of the room. 

Despite the backwash of her anger, Thor was still unmoved, standing still in the center of the room. His eyes flickered to Tony, then to Maximoff, and back again. 

“Okay,” Tony said, his voice a bit strangled due to the pressure around his ribs. “That’s fair. I get that a lot. Can I ask why, or is this more of a done deal?”

“They bombed our Sokovia,” the boy snapped. “You deserve—”

“What do I deserve?” Tony burst out, because the girl was in the illustration and this boy was not and he had to know what made him _ different. _ “Why do all this?”

“We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us.” Neither of them seemed fazed by the non-sequitur that he had just spoken. There was an entranced quality to his voice, as though he’d been returned to the moment that this had happened. “When the first shell hits two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It’s big,” he continued, gesturing with his hands. Wanda had turned her face away, hiding in the shadows of the ruined cell. 

And then he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world, “Our parents go in, and the whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed, and the second shell hits. But,” he said, a falsely cheerful note injecting itself into his voice, “it doesn’t go off. It just... sits there in the rubble, three feet from our faces.” His face twisted in agony, but he managed to force the rest of the words out anyway. “And on the side of the shell is painted one word.”

Wanda snapped her head to the side, and her eyes shone red. “Stark,” she spat.

“I am so, so sorry, but that wasn’t me,” Tony said helplessly, because that was all he could say, what else could he say? “I know what it looks like, but my CFO was selling weapons behind my back for years before I found out. He tried to have me killed, and I cleaned up the program after.”

Both of their lips curled in sync, and it struck Tony for the first time that no, they did not look like hunters. They looked like wounded animals, lashing out at those who would help them because they could not tell the difference between friend and foe.

“I don’t believe you,” Wanda said smugly. She raised a glowing hand.

Thor, who had not spoken up this entire time, raised a hand at the exact same time, fingers curled in an eerie imitation of the girl’s gesture. “Wait,” he rumbled, and some command in his voice had the twins both pause. “Can he show you instead?”  
  


A moment passed. Pietro leaned over and whispered something in Wanda’s ear. She tilted her head at him, catlike, and her eyes flashed. “Very well.” 

Uneasiness ran from Tony’s chest all the way down to his toes. There was absolutely zero way that he wanted _ anyone _ rifling through his thoughts, his _ brain, _ the only thing that had made him relevant to his team in the first place. His genius had birthed the Iron Man suit, JARVIS, the Avengers—what if something went wrong? What if she sabotaged something? What if she somehow sensed some ill thoughts sitting in the back of Tony’s brain about the entire Obie situation, what if—

Seeming to sensing his reminiscence, Wanda leveled red-tinted eyes at him. “If you refuse, I could just kill you.”

“Tony,” Steve choked out, his voice sounding wrecked, “please.”

Thor simply looked at him, unfathomable, and nodded once. 

“Okay,” Tony said, bowing his head. “Okay, okay! Just do it.”

She flicked her fingers in the direction of his head, and Tony went… fuzzy.

It wasn’t the kind of fuzzy that was borne of one too many glasses of champagne late at night, when everything went pleasantly dim and blurry. No, this was like Tony’s essence, his very _ self, _ had been yanked out his ears and forced to hover as an outsider shoved its way into his brain.

He floated. 

It wasn’t painful like last time, which Tony was infinitely thankful for. She wasn’t being _ careful, _ per se, but Tony, in an oddly detached way, could feel her picking through _ him, _ his memories, with more care than he would have expected. A sharp pain in his chest, shrapnel, God how _ sorry _ he was—

Like a rubber band that had been stretched to the max, Tony snapped back into himself. He had tumbled to his knees at some point, and the rough concrete dug into his legs through the thin flight suit. It was suddenly _ so much, _ the lights, the humming of the generator, the way Steve was straining to reach Tony.

“_Bozhe miy,” _ Maximoff whispered in the near-silence. Her face was pale as the moon, and she raised trembling fingers and released his teammates. 

Steve scrambled to his feet and nearly knocked Tony over in his haste to reach his side. Tony massaged at his temples, feeling like someone had just stuck his head on a drill bit and turned it on high. 

“Are you okay?” Steve asked frantically, rubbing his hands over Tony’s scalp like he would be able to detect the psychic damage that Maximoff had dealt. 

“‘M fine,” Tony managed, convincingly. Steve, to Tony’s displeasure, didn’t look very convinced. 

“He _ lied,” _ Wanda spat, but her voice was more pained than angry. “All that time, he _ lied _ and I _ didn’t know—” _

“HYDRA lies,” Natasha said, and there was something distinctly vulnerable about her, something in her eyes that Tony didn’t think she was faking. “People like that, they lie to keep you in your place. Your job now is to figure out what you want to do now that you’re free."

The twins looked uncertainly at each other, managing to make eye contact despite the awkward way their bodies had collapsed into each other. Tony attempted to decipher their expressions, but unfortunately his brain was as functional as a handful of wet noodles. He pawed at Steve’s collar in an attempt to leverage himself upright, but Steve just hijacked his hand and clutched it tight.

“You do not need to decide now,” Thor interrupted. “But I think we all agree that you will always be welcome here.”

Tony waved his free hand in a gesture that he hoped wasn’t rude. “Course. ‘Sides, y’re just kids… not much choice…” 

“You’re going to be hanging out with Clint for a little while,” Steve told him, hoisting him upright. “Medbay time for you.”

“No,” Tony attempted to protest, but it was of no use. That was one of the downsides to dating Captain America: contests of physical strength weren’t exactly _ contests. _

Twin pairs of dark, wounded eyes looked on as the elevator doors closed behind them.

* * *

“You have a _ what?” _

Tony would have been more embarrassed at the way that his voice squawked if Clint had said _ anything _ other than—

“I’m married with kids,” Clint repeated, then giggled a little. It seemed like the painkillers were still wearing off, but then again, Tony wasn’t 100% sure this wasn’t entirely a hallucination. “Laura n’ Cooper n’ Lila."

Tony covered his face with his hands. “Steve,” he called. “Please come help me, Clint is hallucinating that he has a wife and kids. Let me out before he has a full psychotic break.”

“He’s not hallucinating,” Natasha chided, entering with a smoothie in each hand. “Laura is lovely, and his kids are pretty cute.”

“Like you don’t like them better than me,” Clint grumbled as though Tony wasn’t sitting right there, stupefied. 

“Oh, I do like them better than you.”

“I can’t take this anymore,” Tony announced. “If anyone has any other Earth-shattering secrets, they need to tell me now or I’m quitting.”

“You’re not quitting,” Steve called from the other room. Natasha handed Tony a smoothie, as though that would solve any of his problems. He took a sip anyway, then stiffened in alarm.

“You guys didn’t let DUM-E make this, did you?”`

“He was quite upset when Captain Rogers stole the blender from the workshop,” JARVIS reported. “I suspect you might be paying for that in the weeks to come, sir.”

“Great,” Tony groaned, draping an arm over his eyes. “I love dealing with my vengeful robot children. I should do this more often.”

“You shouldn’t,” Bruce called, and they lapsed into a comfortable (and slightly drug-hazed, on Clint’s part) silence.

The Avengers settled back into a routine, one that had been interrupted by HYDRA and Killian and then HYDRA again. Bruce settled back into his own skin, but Thor looked like he wanted to twist out of his more and more every day.

It took eight days for the Maximoff twins to become comfortable enough with the Avengers to come into the common area while everyone was eating dinner. It was a rare day where Steve had actually coaxed Tony out of the workshop, although it was mostly because Bruce had promised to make his tofu extra spicy. Their shoulders were hunched forward to make themselves look smaller, and Tony’s heart _ ached _ for them. 

To his teammates’ credit, none of them acted like anything was amiss. Bruce had already been setting the table with two extra settings just in case the twins ever decided to venture upstairs, so Clint helpfully scooched his chair in to allow them past before cheerfully returning to his attempt to coerce Thor into letting him attach Mjolnir to an arrow and “see what happens.”

Tony was absolutely certain that the spy twins had managed to finagle them into doing these meals to make them seem more relatable to the Maximoffs, and he understood why, even though he was pretty sure their normal team dynamics were enough. It did seem to help, though. Both of them gradually uncurled and sat up straighter, and then, ever-so-hesitantly, began engaging the others in conversation. Tony leaned into Steve’s side and laced their fingers together and just _ breathed. _

Thor told them that he was leaving the day after. The six of them gathered together on the couches, watching him apprehensively. He had been looking unwell for days, like the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders and dragging him down. “I asked the young witch to return me to my dream,” he rumbled. “And I know what I saw. Thanos is moving.”

“Already?” Bruce asked, a hint of worry injecting itself into his usually-placid tones. “I thought Thanos didn’t move for years after this.”

Thor winced. “I believe we have been inadvertently making it easier for him to collect the Stones. In the entire universe, four of the six Infinity Stones have been here in the past year. Two of them are still present.”

“Which one?” Steve asked. “Maybe we could—”

“They will not be so easily persuaded to give it up,” Thor interrupted, putting up a hand. “Protecting Time has been their mandate for thousands of years now. I believe we would have better luck moving the Scepter elsewhere, but I get the feeling you may need it yet.”

“I love his feelings,” Clint muttered. “They always make me feel so warm and fuzzy.”

“I need to get back to Asgard,” Thor continued. “Something my future self said… I believe there are clues that I’ve missed.”

Squealing metal and nails on a chalkboard. A voice. Sharp pain in his side, his arm, like a phantom pain of a wound that he’d never had. 

“Dread it, run from it…” Thor muttered absently. “Destiny arrives all the same.” He looked up at Tony, and his eyes were wide as moons. Tony felt like something ice-cold had crawled into his chest and died there, for surely the sickening feeling of rot and frost couldn’t be normal. “You must prepare.”

“We’ll face him,” Steve said confidently. “We’ll do it together.”

Neither Tony nor Thor contradicted him, but they exchanged an ashen glance before Tony looked away first. 

Thor’s news, even though Tony had known it was coming, made him so sick with dread that he felt it crawl up from his stomach and wrap claws around his lungs. Someone had a foot on his chest and was pressing down, and there was _ nothing he could do to stop it. _ There was ash in his lungs and blood on his lips and the dead were littered around him and they said—

_ Smile, _ they hissed through bloody purple teeth. _ Smile, puppet, for even in death, you are my child. _

Tony’s dreams were of stardust and broken empires, so he tried not to sleep at all.

* * *

A year after Thor left, the Avengers had expanded into an even larger family unit all contained in Tony’s Tower, and he wasn’t even mad about it.

They had made an effort to start recruiting after Thor’s warning and subsequent disappearance, so now the team was populated by a variety of new faces: Sam Wilson, Rhodey, Scott Lang, and the Maximoff twins, to name a few. Everyone pretty much rotated through living in the Tower and doing their own thing, even Tony, although that was partly because his sleepless nights were getting too hard to hide from the super spies and mind-readers.

Taking a cue from his future self, Tony had been feverishly working to unlock the secrets of a nanotech Iron Man suit. Stark had not let him see it because of his concerns for the timeline, but Tony had snuck a few peeks (that couldn’t hurt!) so he had at least somewhere to start. A year had not been enough time to fully flesh out the theory, but he was close enough that JARVIS had suspended production on new suits.

Bucky Barnes was one loose end that the Avengers could never seem to tie up. Despite the dizzying array of powers that their team held, they still could not manage to rustle up a hundred-year-old brainwashed assassin with a _ freaking metal arm. _ Natasha, Sam, and Tony were both privately convinced that Bucky would never turn up until he felt ready to be found, but they let Steve hang onto his hope. 

Tony sat up a little straighter to card his fingers through Steve’s hair. His partner slept much better than Tony did, and deeper, too.

With the way his thoughts were racing tonight, Tony knew there would be no sleep for him tonight. Regretfully, he eased himself off of Steve’s chest and padded with socked feet towards the kitchen. Sure, it was… 3:38 in the morning, but he was really craving a cup of coffee and _ no, JARVIS, he wasn’t going to die of heart failure— _

“Your windows don’t lock.”

The only reason that Tony didn’t scream and fall over was because he had had _ way _ too many bad experiences with Pietro Maximoff’s pranks, because by _ God _ that kid was a jokester, and also way too fast to ever be caught. Tony honestly thought that he had quicker reflexes because of the need to dodge tipping paint cans than all of Natasha’s combat sessions. But none of that mattered right now because—

“Why is the Winter Soldier sitting on my couch in the dark?” Tony managed, one hand over his chest. “It’s three in the morning, why are you here _ now?” _

“I didn’t think anyone would be awake,” Barnes grumbled, sounding _ grouchy _ that Tony had ruined his plans. “I was going to come upstairs in the morning, through the lobby, but I wanted to reconnoiter first. And your windows don’t lock.”

“We’re on the eightieth floor!” Tony exclaimed, defensive for _ some reason. _ “And I also have a fully-functioning AI defending the whole building, so I daresay that you were _ let _ in.”

Barnes frowned. “I’m not the Winter Soldier, I don’t think.”

Tony had to take a moment to retrace the steps that the conversation had taken and backtrack. “No,, my tongue slipped. Do you like Bucky, or..?”

The other man frowned heavily, like the choice had caught him off guard. “I’m not sure. But I… I want to get HYDRA out of my head. I think… something inside me wants to come home.”

“Okay,” Tony said, hoping his voice wasn’t too squeaky. “Well, if you want to sneak out and then surprise everyone in the lobby or whatever, I won’t tell. You could also have a bedroom for tonight.”

Barnes thought for a long moment; then, if Tony wasn’t imagining it, he _ smiled _ a little bit. “I think I’d like to surprise everyone. I’ll go now.”

“You do that,” Tony told him, his adrenaline finally beginning to fade. He waited until Barnes was nearly gone from the room before he called, “hey, look… Steve really missed you, but I told him to lay off you until you were ready. So just… thank you for coming home.”

Barnes paused for the barest moment, then vanished through the open doorway. 

On second thought… maybe Tony _ would _ go back to bed.

* * *

_ “You know that’s a one-way trip,” Steve’s voice whispered, and Tony trembled. _

_ The skyline of New York was all around him, but there was a hole torn in the sky. A festering, rotten gap that old gods had come down from on high to rip open, bleeding space and pain into the heavens. And now it was that pain that was shredding into Tony’s heart, with the shrapnel that he had made and the reactor that he hated. _

_ It was a one-way trip, and Tony shook. _

_ He dove through the wretched gap, and the blue sky of Earth was suddenly billions of miles away, and it was _ cold. _ His hands went numb, which was just as well, because he let go of the death of millions and watched it fly into the cosmos instead. _

_ That should have been the end, but then a purple hand reached for Tony and plucked him out of the sky. _

_ This wasn’t right. The light of the explosion should have drowned out Tony’s vision, it should be _ over, _ but instead he was still awake, staring into bloodshot purple eyes and seeing flashing gold. _

_ “You delay the inevitable,” it rasped. “You fight a fight that you are destined to lose, my child. Give in, and your world will be spared.” _

_ “Never,” Tony choked through ash and tar and terror. “Never, I will never give in.” _

_ “Then you will bleed,” Thanos, and it was Thanos, the one that made Tony scream and fear and work until he collapsed. “And I will burn your precious Earth to ash.” _

_ Tony screamed, but he couldn’t hear it over the roaring in his ears. _

* * *

All things considered, Bucky fit back into the team extraordinarily well.

Tony made sure that JARVIS recorded Steve’s face when they were summoned to the elevators and he watched Bucky step out. He had been heartbreakingly cautious, reaching out a hesitant hand forwards, but then, with a glance at Tony, Bucky grabbed Steve in a bone-crushing hug. 

Quietly, Tony and Natasha, who had joined them, retreated from their reunion. “You didn’t seem very surprised,” she remarked drily. 

“Saw him last night,” Tony said dismissively. “He told me my windows don’t lock. I was on the eighty-first floor, he was just being a smartass.”

She studied him for a long moment—long enough for him to start walking down the hallway again. “Like what you see?”

“I’m happy for you, Tony,” she said, unprompted. “You’ve come far.”

“Uh, thanks?” 

She patted him on the back, and swaggered off to wherever she skulked during the day. Tony looked around the empty room, and said, “JARVIS, what just happened?”

“I believe Agent Romanoff gave you a compliment, sir.”

“Write that down,” Tony said absently, then turned away back to his lab. 

Time always passed oddly in Tony’s workshop. Focusing on his nanotech, buried deep in the wiring, Tony could spend hours down there without even realizing. So he didn’t really hold it against himself for nearly bashing his head on a steel bench when Bucky appeared in front of him out of nowhere. 

“Jesus,” he wheezed. “Warn a guy.”

“I’m sorry,” the former assassin said, and it sounded too sincere for something that Tony had done to himself. 

Tony eased himself to sit on a stool that wasn’t covered in parts, and gestured for Barnes to do the same. “What for?”

“I—the Winter Soldier—HYDRA—well, me, I—” he was stammering badly, looking so uncomfortable and anxious that Tony wanted to hand him a cigarette or something. “Your parents,” he finished awkwardly. “It was my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” Tony said easily. 

Bucky started, his eyes like moons. “But it was,” he countered stubbornly. “I caused their car to crash, I bashed Howard’s head in, strangled your mother, they were my hands and I _ did _ that—”

Tony cringed away from that mental image. “Look, Barnes. I—_ yes, _ I was upset when I first learned what happened. But after I had a chance to think it through…” he held up his hands in a _ what can you do _ gesture. “It didn’t add up.”

Bucky stared at him with the eyes of a wounded animal. “I’m still sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s not necessary, but… thank you.”

Tony clambered to his feet suddenly, and Bucky jumped a little. “Come on! You’ve got some modern technology to enjoy. Like punching bags that don’t break after three hits. You’ll love it, it’s like super soldier heaven.”

Bucky began eyeing him less like he was going to blow his brains out and more like he was starting to realize that Tony was a maniac. Exactly the effect he was going for. 

Last step. Tony stuck his right hand out, a clear message to shake hands. Bucky blinked, then looked at his metal hand. Tony waited. 

His grip was carefully gentle, but Tony smiled anyway, and shook it firmly. “C’mon,” he said. “Lots of stuff to do.”

As it turned out, Wanda’s mind powers extended to brain damage and mental triggers put in place by evil Russian scientists. Both of the Maximoffs had settled very nicely into the superhero life after a year of living with the Avengers, and three months of fighting with them. They had lost the starved animal look and gained a new confidence in the way they stepped, in the set of their shoulders. Wanda still dressed in black and red, Pietro in blue and white, and they were opposite sides of a coin, and Tony feared the day when one of them lost the other. 

The team had molded to fit them, too, just like the rest of the new Avengers. Wanda had become quite attached to Steve and Natasha, whilst Pietro had taken a shine to Clint. Both of them were still a little uncomfortable around Tony, which he didn’t blame them for, so he was happy for them regardless. 

So he wasn’t surprised when, two weeks after Bucky arrived, Wanda offered her ringed hands to Bucky, her bracelets jangling, and said softly, “I’d like to help you.”

Just as softly, Bucky replied, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she said confidently. “I’ve gotten good at this.”

It was clear to Tony, and most likely Wanda too, that Bucky had done a significant amount of healing in the year and a bit that he had been gone. His memories were fragmented and scattered like bits of crystal, but they were _ there, _ and Tony watched as Wanda glowed and pieced the broken shards back together. 

Sometimes Tony thought they would be okay. Like in moments like these, or when they all sat around a table together, laughing until their sides cramped, or when they got shipped into the middle of the Atlantic to fight a mutated squid and Sam and Pietro took turns telling bad calamari jokes. 

But then he’d go to sleep, and see the golden glove and purple eyes and the pain. He’d see the drawing pinned to the far wall, violent scratches and terrible death, and he knew better. 

* * *

If Thor’s future self had gone through half of the things that Thor had in the past year, Thor was sure he would have told himself to forget all about Hela. 

His hunt for the Infinity Stones had been mostly a dead end. He knew where most of them were, after all: the Tesseract in the vaults on Asgard, Time and Mind on Earth, Reality on Knowhere. He had managed to track down the Power Stone, but it was held onto by the Nova Corps so tightly that it would be more of a pain for Thor to retrieve it and find somewhere else to stash it than to just leave it there. 

The orange pools flickered behind Thor’s eyelids again, and he growled and opened them. For the life of him, he could not find Soul, and that bothered him more than he’d like to admit. 

The mages of Vanaheim had pointed him to a distant planet called Xios, where they said the map to the heart of Souls had been stored for thousands of years. But when he got there, the temple was half-caved in, and a pile of ash where the instructions should have laid. Either a trap, or someone had gotten there before him. 

Thor just hoped it wasn’t Thanos. Maybe it would be better for no one to find it, anyway. 

After he gave up on Power and Soul, the dreams began. 

They were horrible, ghastly visions, of blood and pain and death and the cold vastness of empty space. But they did show Thor things, and he wondered absently if his mother’s gifts had filtered into his blood after all. How ironic, that after nearly two thousand years, his gifts would manifest a year after her death.

Dark blades, black and green. Fire and destruction, bursting through Asgard’s gates and devouring the planet whole. Gungnir, snapped in two before a broken throne. A hand, stretched towards his face, glowing with the colors of Infinity—

It was then that Thor reluctantly realized he had to go home.

He cast one more look around him, at this random planet on the wrong side of the galaxy, which he was fairly certain was populated by Skrulls, and raised Mjolnir to the sky. “Heimdall!”

For one concerning moment, nothing happened. Then, with an unusual delay, the Bifrost swept down and carried him away. 

Thor stepped back into Asgard, and he was greeted by the decidedly unpleasant face of a sniveling man in blue armor. “Sorry about that,” he laughed, patting Hofund like it was a toy sword and not perhaps the most important object in Asgard. “Forgot which way the thing turns.”

Thor stared at him. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

The man suddenly looked affronted, as though Thor should have known his name amongst thousands of other Asgardian warriors. “I’m Skurge,” he insisted, which still explained nothing. “We fought together on Vanaheim.”

“Right,” Thor said, as though he remembered every campaign he’d ever had on Vanaheim. “Where’s Heimdall?”

Skurge raised his eyebrows. “Well, a few months ago, Odin charged Heimdall with treason, but he disappeared before the trial. Hard to catch a guy who can see everything.”

Thor thought he said something else vaguely affirmative, but he was lost in his suddenly whirling thoughts. Odin’s bizarre reaction when he’d brought up the name Hela, followed by his apparent lack of recollection on the topic. Sending Thor away from Asgard, the only person who saw everything that anyone did suddenly exiled…

Contrary to what most people thought, Thor was not stupid by any measure. Loki was the trickster, the one who could turn circles around you with a few well-placed words, but Thor was fully capable of reaching a conclusion that was, most of the time, invariably correct. So it was impossible for him to be blind to this particular conclusion. 

_ Brother, I am going to _ kill _ you. _

Thor was pretty sure Skurge was still talking, but Thor whirled Mjolnir and set off towards the palace in the distance. 

As he approached, tongues of flame licked at the towers, black pillars emerging from the cracking foundation. When he blinked, they were gone. Thor continued resolutely onwards. 

No one tried to stop him as he swept through the royal palace. He recognized a few dutches and foreign dignitaries, and offered his best nod, but he was fairly certain that his expression was certainly living up to his title at the moment. 

_ Stormbringer, _ a voice whispered. _ You are a destroyer, Odinson. _

Thor pushed open the doors of the throne room like he was always meant to be there, and when Odin saw him, he laughed. 

“Leave us,” Thor called, and his tone brooked no argument. Without waiting for a word from the king, the petitioners and the advisers scuttled outside. 

“I was wondering when you’d catch on. I thought it would be years, to be honest.”

Loki still hadn’t abandoned their father’s visage. It was taking a significant effort to avoid lashing out at his late brother. 

“I’m not as stupid as you make me out to be, Loki,” Thor said, and though he meant it to sound accusatory, he just sounded tired. “I knew something was wrong as soon as you let me leave Asgard without a fight.”

Odin’s expression wavered, and then melted away, leaving Loki lounging in his place. “Are you trying to tell me you’re not angry?”

“I am,” Thor said, even though he didn’t even know how he felt about it. “I’ve just—come to expect it.”

Loki hummed noncommittally. “And what are you going to do now?”

“Well, you have to tell me where you’ve sent Father,” Thor said easily. “And then I’ll consider letting you _ not _ rot the rest of your life away in prison.”

“Why do you even want to find Odin?” Loki asked, sounding like he was about to start picking his nails with a knife or something equally aggravating. Thor realized absently that he should be feeling some semblance of joy at the revelation that Loki was alive, _ alive, _ but ever since he had returned to Svartalfheim and found Loki’s body missing, he thought he’d always known. He couldn’t find it in himself to be happy about this news, no matter how much he loved his brother. 

“Because he’s kept something big from us,” Thor snapped in response to Loki’s question. “And I don’t know what it is, and we won’t know until I find him.”

Loki finally sat forward on Hlidskjalf, propping his chin in his hand. “Like what?”

Thor sighed heavily, and he wished he could sit down and just… rest. He hadn’t had any true respite in about a year now: by product of his nature and his lightning, he could go for weeks without sleeping, and escaping the dreams had seemed worth it at the time. Now, Thor was just tired. “Have you ever heard the name Hela?”

“Only when you asked me about it before you left.”

“Yes, well neither have I, but when I asked our real Father about her, he turned white and fell into the Odinsleep.”

Loki barked out a laugh. “That sounds like Father.”

Thor couldn’t explain it, but he felt the jagged edges that all the death and mistrust had cut into their relationship begin to smooth over. _ That sounds like Father. Father. Father. _He offered Loki a small, genuine smile. “Yes, it kind of does.”

Loki searched Thor’s eyes for a moment, and it seemed monumental even though it lasted a mere second. Like Loki was seeing something that Thor never had, never could.“Why now?”

“What?”

“Why are you coming here now?” he clarified. “Where’ve you been? I keep half an eye on Midgard just in case something weird happens, you know those humans—”

“Of course,” Thor said indulgently, and Loki cast him a halfhearted glare.

“And you haven’t been there. Why?"

For a moment, Thor’s vision flickered, and he saw Hlidskjalf in pieces, scattered across the throne room, the ceiling mosaic haloed around the ruined gold. Atop it lay Loki, his skin tinged purple, neck at an awkward angle, eyes bulging, and Thor swayed forwards a step.

“_Thor.” _

Thor blinked away purple flames and gushing blood and discovered that Loki was now standing less than three feet from him, wearing an expression that on anyone else would have been _ concerned. _That… wasn’t good. Was he losing time because of these now? He’d thought they had just been bleedover from what Wanda Maximoff had showed him a year ago, but if Loki was noticing that he was spacing out…

“Sorry,” he said quietly, and then he cursed himself. He dredged deep within himself for the old, confident Thor, the one who hadn’t been beaten down by the future and the knowledge of his family’s death, his own brutal injuries, the destruction of trillions, the one who stood strong and tall and arrogant and shone brightly before Loki’s shadow. Where had he gone?

“It’s nothing,” Thor managed, but Loki—the Prince of Lies, Thor remembered belatedly—wasn’t very convinced. 

His brother raised a single eyebrow, so much like Frigga that it hurt something in Thor’s chest. He caved much easier than he used to, he noted ruefully. Loki would probably miss the challenge, or something. Thor certainly wouldn’t miss the arguments.

“I’ve been having visions,” Thor admitted. “Dreams. Death, pain, fear, more death. The future, it’s… not ideal. I’ve been searching for the Stones.”

Loki’s skin, already pale, went a sickly shade of white that looked nearly blue. “No,” he whispered. Thor winced.

“Thanos is coming for them,” he said softly. “I won’t… I can’t let it happen.”

Loki inhaled sharply, and his green eyes looked like they were full of broken glass. For a fraction of a second, Thor thought he saw tears shimmering in their depths, but they were gone before he could even blink.

“I’ll take you to Father,” Loki said, which was… a pleasant change. Thor had expected to argue and threaten and plead until Loki gave in from annoyance rather than any convincing on Thor’s part. Maybe times _ were _changing. “And we’ll fix this. We have to.”

The darkness eased, just a little. Loki reached for Thor’s hand, and Thor took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone so so much for your support <3 
> 
> comments mean a lot to me [as do kudos etc, obviously] because i love hearing from you!! 
> 
> i solemmly promise that i will try my utmost to have another chapter up as timely as possible, and it will NOT be another six months. thank you everyone <3
> 
> also!!! i know this chapter was pretty confusing timeline-wise. the beginning half of this chapter took place c. 2013-maybe early 2014, and the events of the opening scene of age of ultron took place just before the events of this chapter, but a year early. the second half of this chapter is 2014-15, the timing is not exact. if anyone has ANY questions, or suggestions for other characters or story arcs, leave a comment and i will answer! i have so many notes on the timeline that they all blur together and i forget everyone hasnt seen them. 
> 
> i hope everyone is doing their best to support black lives matter and other important movements in these turbulent and important times <3 sending good and healthy vibes to everyone!!

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters may take a little while to upload, just because of _how dense_ this story is going to be. I promise this won't be abandoned... just be prepared for a long ride!
> 
> the interludes between POV switches are from an e e cummings poem beginning with "what if a much of a which of a wind / gives the truth to summer's lie" (i haven't found a name)
> 
> today is also my birthday!!!!!! i decided to wait to post this until today because... well... it's my birthday. so more kudos and comments for me??????????????????????? makes me happy :)
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!!! seeing my inbox fill up is so happy-making!!!


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